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Hello and welcome, comedy forumgoers and readers! Some of you may have remembered me posting a crazy little story back on the old forums called BIONICLE: The Legend Reloaded. It was essentially a parody of the movie BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn and inadvertently ended up starting a trilogy of Bionicle parodies, with The Legend Exploded and The Legend Implodedfollowing not long after.

Unfortunately, now that the Archives have been taken down, TLR was lost and the link to it in my library lead nowhere.

Thankfully, I have the entire story saved onto an external device. Since TLE and TLI are both still on BZP, I have reposted the entirety of TLR here so the entire Legend Trilogy can be read.

This is merely a repost. It is not a rewrite. It is the same story as the one from the Archives. While it could undoubtedly be better, I do not have an interest in making any major changes to the story itself right now. I may edit minor typos or grammatical mistakes, however, but I imagine that will be the most I do in terms of editing or rewriting.

Without further ado, I present to you the beginning, where all of this madness first began:

Chapter 1: Mata Nuis Not Bothering Anymore

A short being in yellow armor (because yellow armor is a chick magnet) raised a rifle and aimed it at the cybernetic demon wolf he had been hunting. His name was Mata Nui and he was not going to go home to his girl Kiina without some food to put on the table.

The wolf demon thingy snarled and, with a cry like that of a dolphin, leapt at the ex-war hero with blinding speed and agility. Mata Nui could see the foam at its teeth, its sharp, blood-stained claws, and saw that its eyes were full of hate and hunger. Or something like that. He just thought it looked crazy.

Anyway, the wolf jumped at him, but Mata Nui was faster. He raised the rifle even higher than before and, holding the gun with only one hand, shot the cybernetic demon wolf right between the eyes. The wolf creature went flying back and slammed into the stone wall of the canyon Mata Nui had tracked it down in. It slid to the ground, dead, although because this is a kids comedy well say it was taken to the hospital forever and leave it at that.

Mata Nui walked over to the hospitalized wolf and slung it over his shoulder. He did not have the first idea how he would cook and clean this creature. He figured Kiina would know that, but if she didnt they could always eat it raw. Thats how he and his friends had eaten their enemies during the war, after all. Raw meat was manlier than cooked meat anyway, in Mata Nuis humble opinion.

-

A few hours later, Mata Nui drove up in his Thornatus (technically it was Kiinas, but because it was yellow like him he usually pretended it belonged to him) to his house, which was a basic one-room stone hut. Like most of the inhabitants of Bara Magna, Mata Nui didnt have enough money to get a more luxurious house. And, again, like most of the Bara Magnans, he was too awesome for silly things such as indoor plumbing and reasonable safety conditions, so he didnt need a bigger or nicer house anyway.

As Mata Nui walked up to his house, he began thinking over how hed show his girl Kiina what he caught. He imagined it would go something like this:

Mata Nui: (with the wolfs body hidden behind him) Kiina! Im home!

Kiina: Mata Nui! Where were you?

Mata Nui: (slyly) Oh, nowhere in particular.

Kiina: Were you hanging out with those old war buddies of yours again?

Mata Nui: (again, slyly) Maybe a little.

Kiina: Not that I care. Im no generic female stereotype who always worries about the male main character anyway.

Mata Nui: Right you are, Kiinie.

Kiina: Dont call me that or Ill play football with your head. American football, for you non-Americans reading this.

Kiina: Of course you are. Now go get the chainsaw and lets try to figure out what the edible parts are on this thing.

Yes, Mata Nui thought as he reached the door, this would go perfect. Of course, he had no idea whether Kiinas favorite food actually was cybernetic demon wolf stew, but he figured the conversation would go that way. He was just that awesome, after all.

He opened the door which was strangely unlocked, although he paid no attention to this and as he stepped inside, he called out, Kiina! Im home!

Then he stopped dead in his tracks. The room was completely dark despite the windows being open which allowed the bright sunshine to pour in but Mata Nui knew this was Hollywood darkness, so it was really more of a dark bluish hue that let him see where he was even though it was supposed to be dark. He wished it was the cool reddish kind of darkness instead, but he knew the budget for this comedy was pretty low to begin with so he didnt complain.

What he saw horrified him. The table had been flipped over and smashed in two. Their chairs had been smashed against the walls, leaving chair imprints in the plaster. The fridge door was open and Mata Nui saw that all of the food was gone (he gasped dramatically upon seeing that). Someone other than himself or Kiina had slept in their beds. And there appeared to be claw marks on the wall, like a gigantic cat had been sharpening its claws on Mata Nuis hut.

Worst of all, there was no sign of Kiina. He didnt see any blood, but even if he had he knew it would be censored. Remember, this is a kids comedy, so we cant show blood or anything gory.

He dropped the cybernetic demon wolf and walked deeper into the hut, gawking at all of the carnage. Then his sharp eyes caught a flash of white, which caused him to jump, for he feared a ghost had blown up in front of him. It had happened once before.

He looked around and saw that it was only a small piece of paper upon which was written a note in tiny, elegant letters made by an obviously well-educated person. In other words, not Kiinas handwriting.

He picked up the note and read it:

Dear Mata Nui,

We kidnapped your girl Kiina and are holding her hostage. If you cannot turn up at Roxtus with ten billion and a half dollars in cash by the end of the night, you will never see your girl again.

Signed, the mighty Tuma, leader of the Skrall.

Mata Nui gasped dramatically. Oh, look! A shiny penny! He picked up the shiny penny and gazed at it for a few minutes before he realized what was written on the note.

Then he crunched the paper in his hands as righteous anger surged through him. First, I am drafted into some nutty war by some crazy scientists. Then I am ridiculed and mocked by my comrades because I wear yellow armor, which is totally a chick magnet and not kid appeal. And then, I see death and chaos all around me every day until the day the war reaches its epic conclusion.

At first, I thought I had escaped the war when it ended ten years ago. I thought I could settle down and have a family and live happily and peacefully. I thought I could put the war behind me, ignore my problems in the hopes theyll go away.

Click, his pet bug (for want of a better term), hopped onto his shoulder and looked at Mata Nui worriedly. Then he leapt into the air and with a blinding flash of awesome light followed by a guitar solo transformed into Mata Nuis 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle that was capable of blasting cities into pieces.

But apparently, the war has followed me here, to this very hut, and has stolen my girl, said Mata Nui, his voice growing steadily louder. Now the Tuma has decided to get revenge on me by attacking the girl I sort of like. The Tuma might be in charge of billions of Skrall, but he has severely, severely underestimated my power and my unstoppable rage.

He looked down at his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle and said to it, Click, were going to kick some Skrall butt and save hot girls. But first, I need help, the kind that doesnt take no [inappropriate word censored] from any Skrall. And I know exactly who fits that description.

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:06 PM.

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Mata Nui drove his vehicle up to an old, rundown shack in the middle of nowhere. He hopped out of his Thornatus and, after locking it and making sure the theft alarm worked, strode casually up to the shack with his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle on his shoulder.

He stopped at the door and knocked on it. A gruff voice that reminded him of Clint Eastwood answered, “What the KFC do you want?”

The door flung open. As Mata Nui entered, the door shut closed behind him. Not that he cared. He was with his three old war buddies and, although they were all psychotic to a degree, he knew none of them would try to kill him here. They would only do that when he least expected it.

Mata Nui looked at the shack in which he had stepped in. Like his hut, it was one-room. But unlike his hut, the decay and damage it had taken over the years had not been inflicted by Skrall. It was mostly due to his friends’ laziness that the roof was leaky, the floor little more than packed dirt, the food rotten, the trash can overflowing, and the bullet holes in the wall (actually that was his fault, but he pretended one of the others had did it instead).

He then turned his attention to the center of the room, where three of the crustiest, rustiest, and mustiest ex-soldiers he had ever seen sat around a makeshift wooden card table. There were several empty bottles of water strewn across the floor and table and lots of leftovers that no one cared to eat. Mata Nui didn’t care. He hadn’t come to eat leftovers. He had come to talk to these three.

He glanced at the first one, a red-armored old man named Ackar. Despite having celebrated his 60 billionth birthday recently, Ackar could still kick butt better than kids half his age (or however younger you’d have to be compared to a 60 billion-year-old). He had a Clint Eastwood-like voice, which Mata Nui had always suspected was a fake, although the last guy who had suggested that got his butt kicked into next Tuesday.

Ackar had also been Mata Nui’s mentor, which was pretty much how Mata Nui learned to be as awesome as he was. Ackar was retired now, though, but he still occasionally would get lost in the desert with only a half drunk bottle of water, a rusted, broken blade, and a bagel just to prove he could survive without civilization for a month.

Then Mata Nui shifted his gaze to Gresh. Younger than Mata Nui and Ackar, Gresh was a green-armored assassin who could strike as fast as death itself. He would often say some stupid joke before blowing your brains out, but his speed and skill had saved Mata Nui’s hide more than once, so he was an accepted part of the crew.

And finally, there was ‘Double Barrel’ Berix, an Agori that had supposedly escaped from the insane asylum on Bota Magna and joined the army in order to avoid being recaptured. Berix was the likely most psychotic of the group, known for his love of his double barrel guns and his disdain of things like reason and logic. Mata Nui had once seen Berix literally mow down an entire battalion of enemy soldiers during the war, emerging without even a scratch on his armor.

These three were Mata Nui’s old war buddies. Although no longer working in the army, they liked to get together every now and then to play pranks on Old Man Raanu, such as running up to his door, ringing his doorbell, and running out of sight before Raanu could see who had rang the bell. They also graphitized pictures of themselves on streets, walls, vehicles, and people. Occasionally they got together for a hunting party – in which they would hunt down Bigfoot, which they had so far had no luck in finding – but mostly they played pranks.

Mata Nui sat down and laid his rifle across the table. “I assume you all know why I am here.”

“Because the pixies stole your magical lollypop, right?” said Berix with a straight face as he spun his guns in his hands.

“If by ‘pixies’ you mean Skrall and by ‘magical lollypop’ you mean Kiina, then yes, I suppose that is what happened,” said Mata Nui, just as seriously as Berix. “In other words, the Skrall have kidnapped my girl Kiina and we have to rescue her.”

Gresh, who was cleaning his shield from his last job, looked up and said, “Yo girl’s been kidnapped, dawg?”

“Yes, homeboy,” said Mata Nui, nodding. “They left a note in my hut. I was upset because I had just caught a cybernetic demon wolf for Kiina to cook, too.”

“The Skrall are too powerful to take on alone,” said Ackar, leaning forward. “So you’re asking us to help you, right?”

“Right-e-o, Ackar,” said Mata Nui, his hands balling into fists as he imagined just how smug the Tuma looked right now. “I need your help, even though there is a high chance that we will all die horrible, embarrassing deaths.”

“We ain’t done no such thing since da war, Mata Nui,” said Gresh, shaking his head as he leaned backward in his chair. “Yuba expect us to ‘elp u?”

“What Gresh said,” said Berix as he twirled his guns and fired at the ceiling, just for the heck of it. “Look, I’m all for rescuing magical lollypops from pixies and all, but I was going to go into town and go trick-or-treating.”

“Berix, Halloween isn’t for two more months,” said Mata Nui.

“Yeah, but I always like to get things done nice and early,” said Berix as an insane smile spread across his face. “And if no one wants to give me any candy, then I’ll pull a little ‘trick’ involving my double barrel guns here.”

Ignoring Berix, Mata Nui said to the group, “But you will help me anyway, won’t you? I’ve saved all of your lives at least 34.6 times each during the great war. You have all sworn to repay your debts to me some day. Well, today is the day you can repay your debts.”

“It’s been too long since we went on a butt-kicking spree,” said Ackar as he withdrew his sword, which for primarily aesthetic purposes was shaped like a flame. “I don’t have any plans for tonight anyway. So count me in.”

“Berix,” said Mata Nui, looking at the psycho Agori. “Will you also lend your skills? Surely early trick-or-treating can wait?”

Berix contemplated long and hard about Mata Nui’s words, until he finally said, “Okay, Mata Nui. I suppose I can put off trick-or-treating. Will I get to shoot people?”

“With luck, we will all get to shoot people, Berix,” said Mata Nui, nodding reassuringly.

“Yes!” said Berix, pumping his fist. “And we get to hospitalize people, too, right?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Mata Nui, shrugging.

“Then let’s GOOOOOO!” Berix screamed, leaping out of his chair and running through the wall with blinding speed, leaving a Berix-shaped hole in the plaster, which Gresh half-heartedly tried to cover with a piece of thin cardboard.

“But first,” said Mata Nui, turning to Ackar and Gresh, as though Berix had not just run through the wall. “We need information.”

“Information? Whyba do we needba thaba?” asked Gresh, puzzled.

“We need to know exactly where the Tuma’s hideout is and how to infiltrate it,” Mata Nui explained to the bemused Glatorian. “Then we’ll head straight for wherever the Tuma is.”

“I know exactly who to ask for that,” said Berix, appearing suddenly out of nowhere.

“Where did you come from?” asked Mata Nui, surprised.

“That hole in the wall I just made,” Berix replied, casually pointing at another Berix-shaped cookie cutter he had made in the wall opposite the one he had just run out of earlier. “Anyway, like I said, I know exactly who we can talk to for information.”

“Who?” Mata Nui asked.

“My old asylum buddy Metus,” Berix answered. “Back in the old days, he used to know everything. Like, he said the sun goes up and down each day because it is really a rock being pushed up and down a slope by little midgets call narglesnaps.”

“Interesting,” said Mata Nui as he stroked his chin. “So this Metus fellow knows everything, you say?”

“Everything,” Berix confirmed as he hopped up and down in his seat. “And I know exactly where to find him. Come on.”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Aug 07 2013 - 08:38 AM.

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Mata Nui and his crew of crusty, rusty, and quite musty friends charted a course for the village of Vulcanus, where Berix claimed Metus was hanging out these days. Since this is an action-adventure comedy, Mata Nui chose the most dangerous, action-packed route he could find: The Sandray Canyon. His instincts told him something awesome would happen there, but despite his own coolness he could not say exactly what it was going to be.

So the four cohorts began their journey on their rock steed mounts (Mata Nui’s Thornatus had run out of gas, so he decided to take his rock steed instead). As they entered the canyon, Ackar looked every which way for signs of an ambush.

“This place is ideal for an ambush,” said Ackar, stating what I had already said.

There was silence for a few minutes, and then Mata Nui said to Ackar, “Er, Ackar, Kiina isn’t here. Although this is a parody of The Legend Reborn, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to quote every single line in this comedy.”

“Aw,” said Ackar, looking disappointed.

“Now you know how it feels to have the metal claw on the other foot,” Berix replied with a smirk on his face.

“Berix, did you say that just to prove me wrong?” asked Mata Nui as their mounts strode into the canyon.

“Yeah,” said Berix. Then he pointed up at the sky and added, “And the geek at the computer told me to, too.”

“I am sure he did, Berix,” said Mata Nui, nodding.

Then, all of a sudden, they heard a loud whooping sound. Turning around in their seats, Mata Nui and the others saw a huge sand cloud coming their way. There was no way to dodge it, but as it drew closer Mata Nui saw that it was not merely a sand cloud, but dozens of hundreds of possible thousands of bone hunters, a rival gang of the Skrall, their steeds kicking up so much sand that it looked like a sand storm had appeared out of nowhere.

Then, in front of them, there was a huge tremor in the ground that nearly knocked our heroes off their steeds. The sand in front of them exploded and, when the dust cleared, a gigantic red scorpion-like creature with tank treads stood before them, blocking their way.

“Skopio!” Ackar yelled, reining his rock steed in as the gigantic monster roared at them Godzilla-style.

“Between da bone hunterbs and da Skopio, weba look to be trapped,” said Gresh, his head spinning from the Skopio to the bone hunters and back with extreme speed. “Whadda weba doba, Mata Nui?”

“You three take out the bone hunters,” Mata Nui decided. “I’ll take on the Skopio.”

“Go anyway,” said Mata Nui. He pulled out his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle and said, “With luck I will finish this thing in five seconds, tops.”

“It’ll take us even less to beat those bone hunters,” said Ackar. He turned to Gresh and Berix and said, “Come on! Let’s go do awesome things!”

“Yayba!” Gresh shouted as he rode after Ackar, with Berix in tow.

Mata Nui turned to the Skopio, which was now aiming its cannon tail at him. “Ready to dance, monster? Because I am a professional tap dancer! Hi-yah!”

Mata Nui leapt off of his rock steed and, as he flew, aimed his 40kMGA rifle at the Skopio. Once he was sure his aim was accurate, he pulled the trigger and sent a bullet the size of Berix’s brain flying into the Skopio’s face.

The monster roared in pain, but quickly shook the bullet out of its head as Mata Nui landed behind it. Turning around, the Skopio fired off a blast from its launcher, which Mata Nui deflected with his 40kMGA rifle like a baseball, sending the blast straight into the creature’s face. Skopio went flying back because it was so awesome and crashed into the canyon walls.

But it wasn’t down yet. As it slid down the walls, it converted its legs into tank treads and rolled down the canyon slope with extreme speed. It fired off a rapid volley of missiles at Mata Nui as it drew ever closer, all of which Mata Nui dodged or leapt over.

There was one projectile, however, that he couldn’t dodge. Actually, it was more like he didn’t want to, ‘cause he sensed he could do something awesome with this one as it flew toward him.

He twisted his body to avoid being hit by the blast, but caught it with one hand as it passed him. Then, in one swift motion, he loaded his own 40kMGA rifle with the Skopio’s blast, aimed, and fired at the tank-like scorpion.

Mata Nui’s 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle had a special power. If one were to load it with the enemy’s ammunition, then one could unleash the attack back at 1000 times its original power. Such strength would be enough to destroy any enemy and, as Mata Nui watched the redirect attack strike its owner, he knew he had won.

A blinding explosion shook the canyon, incinerating half of the walls. The explosion advanced on Mata Nui, but the hero merely punched the explosion backwards, causing the explosion to be absorbed by itself and explode again. Wicked.

“That settles that,” said Mata Nui as he jumped back onto his steed, which had magically reappeared just for this moment. “I wonder how Ackar and the others are doing with the bone hunters.”

-

Ackar was cornered by at least one hundred bone hunters. He had lost his sword due to his own carelessness and, considering how mean the little midgets on their dinosaurs looked, he doubted they planned to sing happy birthday to him. That was a shame, since today was his birthday and the only people who’d sung happy birthday to him had been Gresh – who had completely botched the lyrics due to his odd accent – and Berix, who’d replaced several of the words in the song with cuss words so bad that they would probably have had him banned from BZPower for eternity if they were written here.

But Ackar hadn’t survived this long by being stupid, at least not being only stupid. He knew how to fight without weapons. He knew the fist, if trained correctly, can be mightier than the sword or gun. And, fortunately for him, he had trained his fist correctly just for this kind of situation.

One of the bone hunters rushed him, swinging a sword at his head as it charged. But Ackar raised his fist and punched straight through the sword’s metal, which Ackar could tell had been made out of stupidium, the strongest, thickest metal in the universe.

The bone hunter, shocked, fell off his mount, but Ackar caught him and hurled the enemy at the other bone hunters. The hunter exploded upon making contact with his brethren, annihilating more than half of the 100 bone hunters that had dared to challenge Ackar. Ackar figured that hunter must have been made out of explodium or something.

The surviving bone hunters weren’t fazed by the deaths of more than half of their teammates, however. They charged Ackar and Ackar charged them yelling as loudly as he could, “Get off my lawn!”

Both sides moved so blindingly fast that they appeared to merely pass each other and trade spots. But, as Ackar stood up, the bone hunters he had seemingly ‘passed’ exploded into a rainbow of colors, sending gigantic sparks of fire into the sky and setting several clouds on fire.

“That’s why you never mess with Ackar,” said Ackar as he watched the spectacle, satisfied. “Now I wonder how the others are doing.”

-

Where there had once been five hundred bone hunters, there now stood only two dozen. None of them knew where their prey, a green-armored Glatorian named Gresh, had disappeared to. That was the strange thing about him. He moved so fast that at least one bone hunter had claimed Gresh was actually death itself given a physical body to slay the weak. Needless to say, that hunter had been shot by his allies for being stupid.

In reality, Gresh was using a technique he had learned during the war called ‘awesomeness movement.’ It basically allowed him to move so fast that one could only assume he had been granted such daring speed from the Great Beings themselves. Every time he struck one bone hunter, he killed at least a dozen, so that in a few minutes only two dozen were left, as Gresh had noted above.

He came up behind a bone hunter and – moving so fast he probably destroyed a universe or two in the process – slashed the hunter in half and then kicked both parts at the remaining bone hunters. The two halves of the hunter exploded upon making contact with the survivors making such a huge explosion that Gresh had to use his awesomeness movement to dodge it.

Once it passed, Gresh returned to normal speed and looked around. He had slain all of the bone hunters that had ganged up on him. Not a single one remained standing, for they were all married, you know.

“Takeba thatba, boneda hunterbs,” said Gresh triumphantly as he combined his blades into his shield again. “Nowba I wonderb whatba Berix beba doing.”

-

Compared to the others, Berix’s own strategy was pretty simple: Aim, lock on, and shoot. Using this easy-to-apply method, Berix managed to mow down at least a thousand or so bone hunters with only ten shots. As a result, he was happy and satisfied with this approach and highly recommends it to all of his friends and family (if he hadn’t eaten them, that is).

But Berix, like any good home improver, decided to make his own adjustments to the method. So, instead of aim, lock on, and shoot, he merely aimed and shot. How he could lock on in the first place is unimportant, but we’ll blame the Unicron Singularity for those who want an explanation.

A bone hunter came up behind him with a ridiculously long, ought-to-be-a-sword knife that was twice the size of Berix’s head. Berix was too busy mowing down the hunter’s friends to pay much attention to the sneaky thief and – with a cry of pain – the bone hunter fell backwards, a bullet in its head.

“That’s what you get when you try to sneak up on Berix!” Berix roared triumphantly, his gun still aimed over his shoulder. “And the rest of you ought to run if you know what’s good for your crab cakes!”

But there was no one around to listen to Berix’s ranting. Actually, that was not necessarily true, for there were thousands of ‘hospitalized’ bone hunters in every direction (despite the fact that Berix had been aiming directly ahead the entire time).

“Well, that takes care of that,” said Berix as he spun his gun Robocop-style and put it back into his holster. “Now time to go see how everyone else is doing.”

-

The four warriors met up in the center of the canyon. None of them were particularly tired or exhausted; they used to do things like that all the time back in the war and so were quite used to it by now. In fact, this was so routine that none of them boasted about their accomplishments. Even Berix described his fight with only the blandest, lamest choice of words possible, so by the time they had gathered their mounts and began their journey again they all felt like they had wasted their time.

“By the way, Berix, where are we heading anyway?” asked Mata Nui as his rock steed trampled over the remains of a bone hunter.

“Then to Tajun it is,” said Mata Nui, nodding. “Let us go, to victory and awesomeness and hot girls!”

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

It was Berix who first noticed something wrong when Tajun came into their view.

No, it wasn’t the fact that all of the buildings appeared to be either on fire or knocked over. Nor that there appeared not to be a single living thing crawling among the ruins of the once proud village of water. He didn’t even take note of the terrible stench of death and decay and burnt metal in the air.

“Oh, no!” Berix cried out as the four riders stopped their mounts and gazed at the ruined village. “I forgot to take my iPhone before we left!”

“What?” Ackar said as he looked at Tajun. Then his eyes widened. “Oh no! My favorite taco place was destroyed! I’ll kill the filthy little mustards that did this!”

“That was my favorite taco place, too,” said Mata Nui, deadly serious. He reloaded his 40kMGA rifle. “Let’s go into the village and teach whoever did this a lesson. And if we can’t find the person responsible for this mess, then let’s blame it on Gresh.”

“Yeah,” said Ackar, nodding.

“Uh huh,” said Berix in agreement.

“Yaba – waiba a minute,” said Gresh as the other three quickly rode into the village. “How’s abouba we blamba somebody elseba?”

It did not take long for the four to reach the gates of the town – or lack of gates, thereof, which had apparently been knocked down by whoever had done this. Ackar looked sadly at the ruins of his favorite taco place and quietly vowed to punish the devils that had destroyed it.

After a few minutes of riding, Mata Nui stopped and signaled for the others to do the same. He had heard the sound of metal scraping against metal somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t see the source of it. He wondered if it was more bone hunters or perhaps even Metus, whom he had forgotten about until now due to his rage against the monsters that had crushed his and Ackar’s favorite taco restaurant.

“Perhaps it is Metus,” Ackar offered, although Mata Nui noticed the war hero had one hand on the hilt of his sword just in case. “Berix said he was here, right? So maybe, if we just sing ‘Happy Birthday’ really, really loudly, he’ll come out and talk with us.”

“Worth a shot,” said Mata Nui with a shrug. “All together now: Happy birthday to-”

A gigantic boulder the size of the Matoran universe went flying out of nowhere at them. Ackar, who’d come to expect this kind of thing, leapt off of his mount and, with one swing of his sword, split the boulder into so many small pieces that his friends were only covered in a thin layer of sand.

“Woahba,” said Gresh as Ackar landed on the ground. “Whereba did thaba come fromba?”

“Over there,” Ackar answered, pointing with his sword at a relatively small-looking hut. Addressing the hut, he ordered, “Come out or I will give you the worst birthday present of your life.”

A tall, white being in armor shaped like ice leapt out from behind the hut, an impractically huge axe on his shoulder. He had cold blue eyes like the ocean – except Ackar had never seen the ocean before, so he had no way of knowing that.

But he did recognize the being, whom he addressed coldly, “Strakk.”

“Long time no see, Ackar,” said Strakk in a voice dominated by a fake-sounding Russian accent. “It has been many years since we last fought, but today I will be the victor and you shall be the loser!”

“Wait, who is this?” Mata Nui asked. “And why does he wear such impractical-looking armor?”

“He’s an old enemy of mine, Strakk is,” Ackar answered, his eyes never leaving Strakk. “We clashed several times in the war, but never came to a satisfactory conclusion in any of our fights. No idea why he wears such impractical armor. Probably just to look cool.”

“Stop making jabs about my armor!” Strakk snapped as he swung his axe as though it were made out of plastic. “It has feelings too, you know!”

“Yeah!” Berix agreed, looking at his friends as though disappointed in them. “Honestly, guys, don’t you understand that inanimate objects have feelings? Like, remember when Kirbold made that jab at my gun for looking so weak? He really hurt its feelings!”

“You shot him for that remark, if I remember correctly,” said Mata Nui, nodding. Then he looked at Strakk and said, “My friend with the overly-sensitive gun has a point. I am sorry for insulting you, Strakk’s armor. Can we be friends now?”

“Then let’s dance, pardner,” said Ackar, again in his best Clint Eastwood voice.

“We shall help,” said Mata Nui as he and the others cocked their guns.

Ackar waved them off and said, “Sorry, guys, but this is my fight. I should have finished this years ago. You guys can raid the movie theater, though, since no one seems to be using it. Get some popcorn and watch as I kick Strakk’s icy behind.”

“No!” Strakk roared as he swung his axe again. “Get popcorn so you can watch me kick Ackar’s fiery-“

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, for Ackar had jumped up high in the air and – after performing well over 50 summersaults – brought his word down on Strakk’s head.

Strakk, however, was not slow, despite his impractical shoulder armor. He deflected the blow with his axe, which caused Ackar to float in midair for a moment before he landed and swung his blade at Strakk with enough strength to fell a building.

The attack connected and sent Strakk flying through several ruined buildings, crashing through their walls so fast and so far that by the time he stopped he had been hit clear into the next paragraph.

“Ow,” Strakk said as he sat up, rubbing his head and looking around. “So this is what next paragraph is like.”

Then he looked up and saw Ackar rocketing towards him. Literally rocketing; Ackar had gotten a giant space rocket from somewhere and was riding it through the Strakk-shaped holes in the buildings, causing so much damage that it would have given an insurance agent a heart attack. Ackar’s arms were flailing crazily about as he flew, his eyes glinting madly.

Strakk rolled out of the way just as the rocket came within five feet of him. Then he seized the rocket with one hand and sent it flying straight up. It went so fast that, by the time Ackar realized what was going on, the rock was halfway through space.

“That little spanker!” Ackar shouted as he jumped off of the rocket ship and fell down to Bara Magna. “You’ll pay for this!”

Ackar, through sheer awesomeness, increased his body temperature to the point where he was literally burning through the air. He fell at such ferocious speeds that he was back in Bara Magna’s atmosphere instantly and crashed into Strakk with such force that they both went flying straight through the center of the planet and into space.

However, Strakk punched Ackar, separating the two and sending them flying in different directions. Ackar stopped more quickly than Strakk, however, and charged, running through space like it was just any other battlefield, screaming so loudly that in space someone did hear him screaming.

Strakk, too, was running and when their weapons connected, it sent up a wave of energy so powerful and intense that a nearby planet evaporated and reformed as Super Planet, king planet of the cosmos. Super Planet flew off to rule his universe, vowing to one day return to aid his creators in their darkest hour.

Strakk got slightly distracted by Super Planet’s creation which allowed Ackar to hit him so hard he went flying back to Bara Magna, crashing through the planet’s core again and flying back up into Tajun. Ackar followed after him and, upon reaching Tajun, did not see Strakk anywhere. All he saw was Mata Nui, Gresh, and Berix sitting down in beach chairs watching the fight with several bags of popcorn in their laps.

“Where’d Strakk go?” Ackar demanded.

“Behind you!” Strakk yelled as he suddenly appeared out of nowhere, his axe raised high above his head.

Turning around, Ackar could only raise his arm to deflect the axe. He expected to feel Strakk’s weapon cut cleanly through his forearm, but to his surprise the axe head snapped with such force that Strakk was actually sent flying backwards into a huge building, which toppled over onto the warrior and crushed him beneath its heavy weight.

Ackar waited, tense, but Strakk never rose from the building. Ackar sighed; the battle was now over. He looked up at the sky and for a moment wondered what Super Planet was doing right now.

“Oh, yeah,” said Berix. He whipped his iPhone out from a handy dandy plot hole and quickly texted somebody. “Okay, Metus says he’s actually in Tesara.”

“You mean we came all the way here for nothing?” asked Mata Nui, somewhat disappointed.

“Yeah, pretty much,” said Berix cheerfully as he threw his iPhone back into the plot hole. “Let’s go to Tesara!”

“Thisba plot feelsba like itba beba stretching out a bitba tooba much,” Gresh commented as the four warriors saddled their mounts and continued riding through Tajun.

“Yeah, well, that’s how all good bad action movies are supposed to be,” said Mata Nui. “If there was any actual substance to this plot, this comedy would have ended two chapters ago.”

“Ah, I seeba,” said Gresh, nodding. “Let’s getba going, thenba.”

-TNTOS-

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

The four fighters kept their steady progress north. All of them were aware that they were passing through Vorox territory, but they were confident that they could handle whatever the desert had to throw at them.

That is until the desert actually threw a rock at them, which Mata Nui blew into smithereens with his 40kMGA rifle with ease. The desert, sensing it could not win, ran away, although somehow the desert itself still existed. Perhaps it was actually the personification of the desert that had run away, or maybe you should just shut up and stop taking this comedy seriously.

Anyway, the party continued on, merrily singing “Believe it or Not” off-key when suddenly, a hundred million Vorox popped out of the sands around them, completely surrounding the four seemingly-outnumbered warriors.

The Vorox looked ferocious. All of them wore the same sand-colored armor, caked with sand in every conceivable spot, with sand dripping from their teeth like water (how that makes sense . . . it doesn’t). They carried sawed off shotguns and rusted blades, their stinger tails – which you should beware, by the way – darting through the air like hyperactive wasps.

“Vorox,” said Ackar, stating the obvious as he drew his sword.

“Millions of them, by the looks of it,” said Mata Nui as he loaded his 40kMGA. “Doesn’t make sense why so many would be here at exactly the same time, though, unless . . .”

Without warning a huge, red-armored ogre with claws that appeared to be made of flames fell from the sky and landed in the sand so hard that he conjured a sand storm, which Mata Nui easily blew away with his 40kMGA rifle. The ogre looked absolutely mad, his oranges eyes bulging and glowing like the headlights of a car.

“Dah! It beba an ogreba!” Gresh said in shock.

“I don’t be nee an ogre,” the ogre responded as he brushed sand off of his armor, which seemed kind of unnecessary since he was completely covered in sand from head to foot. “I be nee Malum, exiled for nee crimes in nee army.”

“That tis be nee, Ackar?” asked Malum in surprise. “I be nee not seeing you for years. Me nee think you haven’t changed much since then, old fart.”

Ackar raised his sword, but Mata Nui gestured for him to stop and said to Malum, “Are you in charge of all of these Vorox?”

“I tis be nee in charge of these Vorox,” said Malum proudly, folding his massive ogre arms across his chest. “I tis nee hospitalized their alpha male and took over their pack. Now I tis be nee king of them all, nee.”

“Then I suppose you wouldn’t be nice enough to let us pass?” asked Mata Nui innocently.

“No,” said Malum, shaking his head so furiously it almost literally popped off. “I tis be nee going to hospitalize nee now ‘cause I’m mean that way.”

He glanced over his shoulder at his Vorox and snapped, “Go! Hospitalize ye nee them all!”

An army of Vorox descended upon the four warriors without hesitation. For a moment, Malum watched with satisfaction as his enemies disappeared under a mountain of Vorox and he believed victory was his, now and forevermore.

Just as he was about to turn around and figure out how to make an even more dramatic entrance, there was a huge explosion like that of a nuclear bomb going off that sent him flying face first into the sand. All he could hear were the cries of his Vorox as they flew, screaming in pain as the explosion ripped through the desert.

When the explosion finally stopped, Malum got up, coughed out a boatload of sand (not an exaggeration), and looked behind him. His heart failed as he saw Mata Nui, Ackar, Gresh, and Berix standing among a pile of Vorox corpses, their weapons drawn and ready.

“Our sheer awesomeness defeated your Vorox, Malum,” said Mata Nui as he cocked his gun while the others did the same (Ackar cocked his sword. Yes, he is that hardcore). “Numbers mean nothing when dealing with the main characters of an action movie, except to prove just how awesome they really are.”

“Then allow me to finish you myself!” Malum roared as he burrowed underneath the sand. Then he was gone, nowhere to be seen.

“Can’t fool me,” said Mata Nui as he aimed his 40kMGA rifle at the sand. “Just got to wait for the right moment and . . .”

Malum burst out of the sand in front of Mata Nui, his red armor nearly obscured by the sand covering it. He pulled back his claws, ready to deal the finishing blow, when Mata Nui and Berix aimed their guns at the ogre. In one swift, harmonious motion, the two shot their guns straight into Malum’s chest.

The bullets collided with Malum’s chest so hard that the red ogre was sent flying all the way to Aqua Magna. He hit the planet so hard that he accidentally knocked it out of orbit, sending both moon and Malum falling into the endless reaches of space, never to be seen again.

“That was easy,” said Ackar.

“Iba didn’tba doba anything,” said Gresh, disappointed, as they rode out of the Vorox valley.

“Eh, that’s all right, Gresh,” said Mata Nui, patting his friend on the back reassuringly. “I am sure that someday you will do something as awesome as the rest of us.”

“Reallyba?” asked Gresh.

“No,” said Mata Nui frankly.

So the four warriors again continued their journey, with a very depressed Gresh wondering whether he would ever do something truly awesome.

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Aug 11 2013 - 07:44 AM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

The jungle village of Tesara loomed ahead in the distance. As the party of four drew closer, Mata Nui could see that Tesara looked to be little more than a jungle. Two huge, dead trees rose out of the ground opposite each other, while vines, smaller trees, and various floras grew in between them. Mata Nui saw no sign of any Agori, but unlike Tajun the village didn’t look ruined. In fact, as they entered the village, Mata Nui could hear the sounds of people cheering somewhere.

“Sounds like something exciting is happening,” said Mata Nui to the others as they walked through the jungle oasis.

“Not if I can help it,” said Ackar grimly.

“Dude, just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you have force other people not to like it,” said Berix. “That’s just wrong, dude.”

“Aw, shut up,” said Ackar. “Or I’ll skewer you with my sword and throw your body to the dogs.”

“That’s not what I- Never mind,” Ackar sighed, knowing this argument would get them nowhere faster than following a rock. “Anyway, let’s find this Metus friend of yours, Berix. Did he say where he was in Tesara?”

“Uh, let me ask,” said Berix as he pulled his iPhone out of the handy dandy plot hole and texted his friend again. “Okay, he says he’s in the local fight club, sponsoring a fight between two old guys. Says he’s raking in the dough. Huh,” Berix add as he tossed his iPhone back into the plot hole, “I didn’t know you could rake in dough. I have to try that sometime.”

“I’ll make sure Kiina tries that, too, once we rescue her,” said Mata Nui. “So where is this fight club anyway?”

“We passed it an hour ago,” Berix said casually as he pointed over his shoulder.

“Why did you wait until now to tell us that?” asked Ackar as they stopped their beasts, turned around, and retraced their path.

“’Cause I didn’t know Metus was in the fight club,” Berix said. “Duh.”

-

Later, the four warriors finally located the fight club. It was a semi-large, rundown-looking building with shuttered windows and a locked front door. Clearly, whoever operated this place knew it was illegal and tried to make sure it looked as inconspicuous as possible.

After tying up their mounts outside, Mata Nui and the gang walked up to the door. Mata Nui knocked on it and a portion of the door slid open, revealing a pair of cross eyes that appeared to constantly change color.

“What’s the password?” asked the crazy eyes.

“Password?” Mata Nui repeated, looking at his friends quizzically.

“You need a password if you want to get in,” the eyes explained.

“Um, well, see, the thing is . . .” said Mata Nui as he reached for his gun.

“The password is ‘[censored because we can’t tell you the password],’” said Berix immediately.

“You are correct, my good sir,” said the eyes. “You may enter.”

As the door flung open, Ackar asked Berix, “You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah,” said Berix, nodding as they entered. “I fought here a couple of times myself. Remember those days where I’d come back with a concussion and try to pick a fight with an inanimate object? That was usually because I’d gotten beaten here.”

“I figured you were just crazy,” said Ackar.

“You mean I’m not?” asked Berix, sounding very disappointed.

Once all four had entered, the door shut closed behind them and they could hear what sounded like a million different locks locking themselves. Mata Nui figured this place must be illegal to some extent if a million locks were needed, but didn’t ponder it for long, for soon they came upon a large room where dozens of Agori were gathered, watching two old guys fight in a boxing arena.

One of the old men wore blue armor and appeared to have a breathing tube running into his mouth. The other wore green armor and had a breathing tube running up his scythe, which didn’t make much sense to Mata Nui but again he ignored it. They appeared to be caught in mortal combat, punching, kicking, body-slamming, performing moves that would have made a ninja jealous, and in general being awesome.

“Ah, Berix!” said a greasy, sneaky-sounding voice to the right. “So glad you could make it!”

An Agori clad in white armor walked up to them, with a sneaky grin on his face. The way he walked and acted reminded Mata Nui of a snake, and Mata Nui was scared of snakes.

“David Leisure?” Gresh gasped as the Agori reached them.

“No, but it’s an understandable mistake to make,” said the Agori. “I am Metus, Berix’s friend. He sent me a text saying that you guys want information from me.”

“Yeah, we kind of do,” said Mata Nui as he turned away from the fight, which was just starting to get interesting, as the old blue guy had been handed a metal chair from someone in the crowd and began beating the guy in green armor with it. “Berix says you know everything.”

“Indeedy do I dody,” Metus responded.

It’s official: I hate him, Mata Nui thought.

“So what kind of information do you want?” asked Metus. “Do you want to know where babies come from? How people fit inside televisions? Why men and even some women eventually get male pattern baldness? Or why cameras steal your souls?”

“All of that sounds very interesting, but none of it is what I want,” said Mata Nui, ducking to avoid a bloody-looking dagger that someone had thrown from the crowd. “You see, my girl has been kidnapped by the Skrall and I am going to rescue her.“

“Of course I am,” Mata Nui replied. “Why else would have I traveled all the way to the middle of nowhere if I wasn’t?”

“Well, you could have come to watch the fight,” said Metus feebly as he gestured toward the old guy fight.

“Someday, I might watch,” said Mata Nui, “but for now, I want to know where the Skrall’s main base, Roxtus, is, and how we could infiltrate it.”

Metus straightened up, looked around as though afraid someone might be eavesdropping, and whispered, “Well, okay, then. I suppose I can help with that, if that is all you need to know.”

He pulled a map out of his pocket and handed it to Mata Nui, who unfurled it and began studying it as the other three peered over his shoulder to have a look at it.

“That map should tell you where Roxtus is,” said Metus.

“It is at the end of a rainbow,” Mata Nui observed. “Very interesting.”

“Yes,” said Metus, nodding. “Did you know that rainbows were created by the midgets who push the sun up and down each day?”

“Really?” Mata Nui said, impressed. “How interesting.”

“Yeah,” said Metus in agreement. “Oh and here’s a blueprint of the Skrall’s main hideout,” he added as he gave Mata Nui another scroll. “It should tell you where the best possible entrances are.”

“Thank you very much for this, Metus,” said Mata Nui as he pocketed both the map and blueprint. “I will forever remember you for your kindness . . . maybe.”

“No problem,” said Metus, waving it off like it was nothing. “Any friend of Berix is a possible business rival of mine.”

“See you later,” said Mata Nui. He gestured to the others and said, “Come on, guys. The time to save Kiina has arrived at last.”

-TNTOS-

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

According to the map, Roxtus was east of Tesara. Knowing it would probably be filled with action-packed interruptions, Mata Nui and the others bought a few days’ worth of supplies before heading out.

Not that any of it was necessary. As soon as they took one step outside the boundaries of the village, the sand erupted in front of them and a huge snake demon thingy rose from the depths of some place I can’t mention due to this being a children’s comedy. The snake monster was tan in color – like all desert creatures are, although that does not explain why sand stalkers are red – and had hundreds of gigantic spikes running up and down its back. It could easily have swallowed Tesara whole, but for some reason or another it looked like it wanted to eat four scrawny little people instead.

Ackar shook his head. “Pfft, I’ve faced worse creatures than this.”

“You haba?” asked Gresh.

“No,” said Ackar, shaking his head.

“Let me take care of it,” said Mata Nui as he loaded his 40kMGA. “We’ve wasted enough time as it is. I do not want any more unnecessary interruptions.”

“But isn’t that what this chapter is called?” asked Berix, pointing at the chapter title, which hung suspended above them, seemingly without any help.

Mata Nui glanced up at the title and said, “Whatever. The point is, I’ve had enough of these interruptions and will take down every single monster that gets between us and Roxtus without mercy.”

Upon hearing that, the demon snake thingy looked frightened. Then, without warning, it dove back into the sand, evidently afraid of the little yellow warrior with the big gun.

“Huh, that was weird,” said Ackar as they continued their journey east.

“Must not be a particularly brave demonic snake,” said Mata Nui thoughtfully as he sheathed his gun. “Anyway, since this is a badly written story let’s not wonder about that anymore. Instead, let us continue up and onward, to victory!”

-

According to the map, they were about halfway between Tesara and Roxtus when a sudden chill swept through the valley. Mata Nui stopped, and so did the others. All of them could sense something was nearby, but what it was, none of them could tell. Only Berix didn’t appear nervous, but Mata Nui knew him well enough to know that Berix showed his nerves by not showing his nerves or some crud like that.

“There’s something nearby,” Mata Nui informed the others.

“We already know that,” said Ackar irritably.

“I just- Never mind,” said Mata Nui as his eyes scanned the hills around them. “I am not sure what it is.”

“Maybe the Skrall are trying to do us in,” said Berix, looking around with bug-eyes. “Maybe they have a weather machine that can control the wind.”

“Whatever it is, I am sure we can take it,” said Mata Nui as he pulled out his rifle. He looked toward the hills and shouted, “Bring it on, whatever you are!”

There was still no answer. The wind blew a little bit rougher, like it was trying to scare them off or something.

Mata Nui wasn’t afraid of any stupid old wind, though. The others weren’t, either, but they had their weapons out just in case.

“This isba getting boringba,” said Gresh. “Iba see nothinba.”

It was at that moment that the clouds above them swirled into a tornado, which touched the ground. The wind was so fierce now that Mata Nui and his crew were nearly blown off their mounts, but they held their ground and stared defiantly into the storm, as though daring it to take them on.

Then the tornado suddenly began changing shape. A torso and two arms and legs appeared, as well as a head that was shaped like a LEGO brick. Finally, the tornado finished its transformation and where it had once stood now stood (unnecessary repetiton is fun, kids) a being who appeared to be made out of the raging tornado, his arms and legs swirling like cyclones. He did not appear to have a face.

“Who are you?” Mata Nui demanded. “Where did you come from?”

“I am Tornadias TM!” the faceless being roared. “And I will destroy you with my bare hands!”

Tornadias formed a spear-like tornado in his hands and hurled it at the four warriors. It was coming so fast that Mata Nui knew it would be impossible to dodge. So instead, he raised his hands and actually grabbed the tornado with his hands, but the force of the attack was so great that his friends and their mounts were sent flying away from him.

Then he redirected the attack back at Tornadias. It was a direct hit, but Tornadias took the blast head on and actually absorbed it. If anything, the redirected attack seemed to actually make Tornadias stronger, for he laughed heartily like he had just read this comedy.

“Ha, you think my own tornadoes can hurt me?” Tornadias said with a stupid smile on his face. “Of course they can’t! I am the invincible storm, the deity of the clouds, the creator of destruction! You cannot harm me! I am the personification of the weather itself! All who dare challenge me experience a 90% chance of rain all week with foggy weather and humid temperatures! TORNADIAS!”

“You monster!” Mata Nui gasped. “So you are the one who causes humidity!”

“Precisely, my stupid friend,” said Tornadias with an evil laugh. “No one can stand against my storms! And anyone who tries, dies!”

“Then allow me to die,” said Mata Nui as he ran toward Tornadias with blinding speed.

He reared back as he sprinted and threw a punch at the personification of the storm. But his attack didn’t work; the punch went right through Tornadias, who laughed again and punched Mata Nui in the face, sending the main character flying away. Mata Nui landed hard on a sand dune, but was back on his feet instantly.

“You fool, physical objects can’t hurt me,” said Tornadias, folding his arms like he was better than Mata Nui. “Fists, swords, feet, even bullets . . . none of these are capable of even touching me. You and your friends shall die at my stormy hands! Muhahaha!”

If I can’t touch him, then how am I going to beat him? Mata Nui thought. Does that mean my 40kMGA is useless against him?

“No matter what you do, I shall be victorious!” Tornadias yelled as he raised his hands to the heavens. “And now, I shall smite you with divine lightning from above! Die like the rat you are!”

The heavens above opened up and Mata Nui could see Zeus, the Greek god of the sky, rising from his throne on Mount Olympus with a thunderbolt in his hand. Zeus hurled the bolt at Mata Nui, which meant Mata Nui was pretty much toast.

But I can’t die, Mata Nui thought as he watched the thunderbolt come ever closer. I am the main character! Because of this rule that not even Zeus himself can break, I must somehow survive!

He reached for his 40kMGA and aimed it toward the sky. Luckily for him, he had positioned it in just the right way that the lightning bolt went directly into the gun’s barrel. Mata Nui soon remembered his gun’s special ability and knew this fight had just come to an end.

“Eat electricity, Tornadias!” Mata Nui yelled as he stood up and fired his 40kMGA at the tornado entity.

Normally, Mata Nui’s gun would have shot a bullet that wouldn’t have done a thing to Tornadias. However, this gun now held within it Zeus’ lightning bolt itself, 1000 times its original strength. Mata Nui had read Percy Jackson and the Olympians, so he knew the bolt was already many times stronger than an atomic bomb. At its current strength, Mata Nui knew there was no way Tornadias could survive.

The lightning bolt struck Tornadias directly in the chest. Tornadias’ eyes widened as the electricity coursed through his non-existent skeleton. It hit him so hard that, as he went flying into the sky, he exploded into thousands of different colors. The explosion kept going until it collided with the sky and created a new constellation which shone even though it was the middle of the day.

“Oh, crud,” said Zeus, looking at the new constellation like everything had just gone wrong. “I should probably get out of here now. I, um, have a doctor’s appointment with the god of doctors! Yes, that’s it. Good bye!”

The heavens closed and everything was back to normal. Mata Nui sat up and brushed sand off his armor. Blowing up a tornado entity was a lot harder than he’d thought but he managed to do it anyway because he was THAT awesome.

At that moment Ackar, Gresh, and Berix appeared out of nowhere, prompting Mata Nui to ask, “Where were you three?”

“Nowhere in particular,” said Ackar with a shrug. “Just reading the script for the next comedy, since you had the situation under control.”

“Oooh, what’s the next comedy about?” asked Mata Nui as the party of four began their journey east yet again.

“It’s got shape-shifting entities, lords of elements, some guy named Bucket Head and biomechanical dinosaurs!” said Berix excitedly. “Oh, I wish this was the second comedy already!”

“Patience,” said Mata Nui wisely. “We still have the rest of this movie to go through first. You can worry about the sequel when it gets here.”

“Aw okay,” said Berix, somewhat disappointed. “Then again, according to the script, I’m not even in the next movie!”

“I’ll broker a deal with the producers to get you a part,” said Ackar. “Perhaps you can get killed off-screen and never be mentioned again. Those kinds of characters always get the readers angry!”

“Cool,” said Berix, who probably did not fully understand what Ackar had just said. “Let’s go!”

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

With no more unnecessary interruptions, Mata Nui and the gang soon came within sight of the Skrall camp (or city? I don’t know), Roxtus. They stopped behind a large group of rocks, where they hid their mounts. Mata Nui peered around the corner to get a better look at the Skrall’s main base.

It was essentially a gigantic head of some kind of robot, or perhaps it was simply shaped like that. He could spot millions – or perhaps billions – of Skrall and even bone hunters milling around the place. It looked like it was heavily defended; there was no way anyone could sneak into the city with security like that, not unless they wanted to die a painful death. Mata Nui wanted to live for at least a few more years, so he decided the best route into the city was the direct route.

“Guys, this may be our last stand,” said Mata Nui, turning around to look at his amigos. “We’ve been through a lot together over the years, but today may be our finest hour.”

He looked at Ackar and said, “Ackar, you were my best friend and mentor. If we die, I can at least die knowing your training has never helped me in the slightest.”

“And if I die I can say you were the worst pupil I’ve ever had ever,” Ackar returned.

Mata Nui glanced at Gresh and said, “Gresh, although I am never sure of even half of what you say anymore, I can still call you a friend who stuck with me through thick and thin.”

“And Berix,” said Mata Nui as he turned to the Agori, who was building a sand castle out of sheer boredom. “Although never the sanest, I believe you are just as brave and awesome as the rest of us.”

“Of course I am,” said Berix without looking at him. “I am going to be the fan favorite character, duh.”

“Most likely,” said Mata Nui with a shrug. “Anyway, get your weapons ready. We are going in.”

-

The attack on Roxtus began immediately. Charging out from behind the rocks on their sand stalkers (plot holes are fun, kids), the warriors yelled loudly to announce their presence, swinging their swords, shooting their guns, and in general looking pretty scary for a bunch of guys in brightly colored armor.

The first wave of Skrall they ran into fell like trees, since they had not expected Mata Nui and the others to attack with such force.

The second and third waves, however, came prepared and soon the four warriors had themselves surrounded and outnumbered a billion to one. The Skrall were all clad in identical black and red armor, swinging swords or loading guns as they pressed in on our heroes.

“Take this!” Berix shouted, shooting down a Skrall with his double barrel guns. “How’s that taste? Like sugar?”

“Actually,” said the Skrall whom Berix had shot, sitting up, pulling the bullet out of his wound, and licking it, “it tastes like chocolate.”

“Really?” said Berix, disappointed. “I was sure it would taste like sugar. That’s why I dumped all of my bullets and bullet shells into a bag of sugar before we got here after all.”

“Well, you should try harder next time,” the Skrall responded harshly. “If you want your opponent to taste sugar, then you should-“

A shot to the forehead cut the Skrall off abruptly, allowing a now-angry Berix to get back to the fight. He decided that, sugar tasting or no, he’d shoot as many bullets as he possibly could. But he did make a mental note to get more sugar next time they were passing through a village.

-

Mata Nui had been cut off from the rest of the group by about a dozen or so Skrall. They looked mean, tough, and ugly, like all good action movie villains. However, Mata Nui knew looks meant little in combat. All that mattered was whether you were awesome or not and Mata Nui was indeed awesome.

He ran up the side of a building and jumped off. As he flew through the air, he pulled out his 40kMGA rifle and shot off several volleys at the Skrall. Many of them fell, hospitalized, but a few survived and began firing their guns at him as soon as he landed.

Mata Nui whirled around and hit the bullets back like they were baseballs. The enemy projectiles shot straight back into their original guns, causing the weapons to blow up in the faces of the Skrall and send the Skrall flying away. Mata Nui spun his gun around and shot the remaining Skrall out of the air as they flew.

Then even more Skrall appeared, unsheathing swords and loading and reloading guns as they fired. Mata Nui jumped behind a wall to hide from the attacks, but as he heard the metal bullets pierce his barrier he knew his chances of survival were minimal at best. There was probably over a thousand Skrall attacking him right now, but he pushed away such depressing thoughts. Only action ever proved anything and he knew today he would prove his awesomeness by kicking the Tuma’s butt.

A bullet flew by overhead, which Mata Nui caught in his hands and then loaded into his 40kMGA. He then jumped into the air, aimed, and fired the enemy bullet straight at the crowd of Skrall that had been attacking him. The bullet exploded, totally annihilating the Skrall gang members. The explosion was so large that Mata Nui actually rode on it up onto the roof of the tallest building.

Landing softly on the roof, he looked up and saw even more Skrall coming toward him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw tons of Skrall scaling the structure, all trying to get him.

Leaping over a gigantic army of Skrall, Ackar landed feet first and spun around in time to catch a hundred blades on his sole sword. He pushed back and sent those swords flying into the air. Then he leapt up and grabbed all one hundred of them. Somehow he now held a hundred blades in his hands and mouth, despite that technically being impossible.

Yelling as much as he could with a mouthful of metal, he charged forward, slashing and slicing through thousands of warriors. He then decided one hundred swords wasn’t much of a challenge and hurled them all away. The blades struck an oncoming group of Skrall, hospitalizing many and wounding several more.

“Eat sand!” Ackar shouted as he brought his sword to the ground, which sent up a huge wave of sand that covered the front row of Skrall immediately.

“Now let’s see how you like glass!” Ackar roared as he unleashed a gigantic wave of heat and flame at the sandy Skrall, immediately transforming them into one solid barrier of thick glass. “Heh, makes glass!”

His victory was short lived, however, for the next moment the remaining Skrall smashed their way through the glass barrier, sending huge shards of glass flying at Ackar. Ackar ducked to avoid the shards and then rolled away to avoid the oncoming Skrall, which rushed past him at such fast speeds that they resembled a blur of motion more than an army.

“Think you’re hot stuff, Skrall?” Ackar asked as the Skrall army turned around to face him. “I’ll show you who’s hot!”

He unleashed a blast of flames at the Skrall, instantly incinerating a large amount of them. Then he charged through the flames, his own armor catching on fire, and attacked the remaining confused and frightened Skrall. He cut through their ranks like they were made of paper (because they were) until the last warrior went down.

Ackar, breathing hard, stopped and sat down on a pile of hospitalized Skrall to take a break.

“Whew, that had been tough,” said Ackar, wiping sweat from his brow. “Now I wonder-“

A large metal hammer flew out of nowhere and collided with the back of Ackar’s head, sending the old coot falling forward, unconscious. A being cloaked in shadows appeared and began dragging Ackar away, grinning evilly as he did so.

-

Gresh knew when he was outnumbered. By his estimate, he was taking on at least three million Skrall, all by himself, with no backup to be expected from the others. He had seen Mata Nui cornered on a building by a bunch of Skrall, Ackar fighting another army with flames, and Berix toppling whole towers by himself.

I canba doba this, Gresh thought as he separated his shield and dodged the combined attacks of six hundred Skrall. No neeba to worryba.

He narrowly avoided an attack from a particularly beefy Skrall warrior and silenced the poor Skrall with his devastating reflexes. He turned around in time to see a Skrall’s blade coming toward his face.

Moving with lighting fast speed, Gresh jumped up, timing it just right. As the blade went underneath him, he landed on it. Because the Skrall was so surprised, he spun right around and sent Gresh flying straight into the heart of the army.

He landed on a dozen Skrall and, pulling out his machine gun which he never used or mentioned until now, began literally mowing down Skrall one after the other as they approached. He spun around in a circle, his machine gun shooting again and again until it ran out of ammunition. Then he threw it into a nearby group of Skrall, causing it to explode and send them all flying.

Then Gresh activated his awesomeness movement. Each time he slew one Skrall warrior, he was actually felling a dozen. Unprepared for this sudden assault, his enemies either fell with rapid speed or ran, but he showed no mercy to those who couldn’t escape his devilish speed. In fact, had he not noticed there were no more Skrall left he would likely have killed himself due to his extreme speed.

As it was, he forced himself to go back to his normal speed. He then noticed one Skrall attempting to flee in the distance, which Gresh knew he couldn’t allow.

So he bent over, picked up a rock, pulled what looked like a pin from it, and then threw the rock at the Skrall. The rock went flying, high and higher, until it fell and collided with the escaping Skrall’s head. Because this was a grenade stone, it exploded the minute it came into contact with the Skrall, sending the enemy bursting into fiery flames as he hit the ground.

“Thereba,” said Gresh, folding his arms. “I beba the winnerba.”

Just then, a heavy club made out of thick steel crashed into the back of his head. Gresh, caught off-guard, was knocked out instantly and crashed onto the battlefield as a mysterious figure wielding the club approached. Tossing the club aside, the figure dragged Gresh’s unconscious body away, chuckling as he did so.

-

Berix stood amongst the rubble of several Skrall towers which he had knocked over. Hospitalized or wounded Skrall lay around him in every direction, covered in plaster, rock, and metal, but millions more Skrall just kept coming. Berix was so small that all he needed was his trusty dusty knife he called ‘Hospitalizationbringer,’ running along and bringing hospitalization to anyone who got near him (yes, we’re still going with the hospitalized shtick. Remember, kids’ comedy).

Of course, his double barrel guns were also quite useful. He could take out four Skrall with one shot from each gun, which he calculated meant he could hospitalize at least 16 Skrall every second. Berix wasn’t too good with math, but he figured that was a pretty good estimate.

Berix then noticed a gigantic army of new Skrall appeared around him. Then a thought occurred to him.

“Hey! Who wants pie?” Berix shouted as he lifted up a cream pie he had pulled out of that hand dandy plot hole that followed him everywhere.

“We do! We do!” all of the Skrall shouted in unison, their voices so loud that they probably caused Cthulu to stir in his sleep. “Give us pie! We want pie!”

“Then come get some!” Berix shouted as he hurled the pie over the army of Skrall.

Just as the pie was flying exactly over the assembled army of Skrall, Berix pulled out his guns, aimed, and fired off several rounds of ammo at the flying pastry. As soon as his bullets collided with the pie, it exploded raining down pie filling and icing that was actually a special type of acid that ate through metal.

The Skrall, totally unprepared for this, began running around and screaming in panic as the acid ate through their armor. This gave Berix the opportunity he needed to dash into the crowd, switching between his double barrel guns and Hospitalizationbringer to finish the job. He leapt onto one Skrall and yelled, “Giddy up, doggy! We’re ‘a’ goin’ Skrall huntin!’

The Skrall yelped as Berix dug his spurs into the warrior’s side, causing the Skrall to run straight through the crowd. Berix fired as many shots as he could at as many Skrall as he could find as he rode. He was now in ‘hospitalize everything’ mode; if it moved, it was good as hospitalized and Berix could care less if it was friend or foe or neither.

Then, noticing a wall coming up, Berix leapt off of the frightened Skrall, which crashed into the wall with such force that he broke through and kept on going. The Skrall eventually crashed into another tower, which toppled over onto a group of reinforcements that had been about to meet up with and join the main army.

By the time Berix had run out of ammo, practically all of the Skrall were gone. He stood alone in an area that looked like someone had dropped a bomb on it. That would be true if you define the word ‘bomb’ as ‘crazy little blue Agori who can’t control his energy.’

“Come on, suckers!” Berix roared as he waved his guns in the air. “Bring it on! I am Double Barrel Berix and I’m waiting to-“

A greasy hand seized his shoulder and, before he knew it, the hand performed a Vulcan nerve pinch on the Agori, causing him to fall unconscious. The mysterious figure grabbed Berix before he could hit the ground and began hauling the crazed Agori away, feeling very satisfied with himself.

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Mata Nui ducked to avoid a volley of bullets from an incoming Skrall squad. He rolled over to the edge of the building and jumped off. He ripped a grenade from his bag and hurled it behind him. As soon as it landed on the roof, the grenade exploded, taking out several hundred Skrall warriors that had been crawling upon its surface or standing on its roof.

He spun in the air and landed on the ground with ease. Then he looked around and saw he was surrounded by yet more Skrall, all of who were aiming their weapons at him. He figured he could take them all on, considering how much damage he had done to the others already.

But just as he raised his 40kMGA to fire, he heard a deep, rumbling voice say, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mata Nui.”

Mata Nui froze and glanced up at a nearby building. On the balcony of the building he saw a tall, fat-looking warrior with four guns sticking out of his back. The being wore green and black armor, armed with a large hand cannon and a shield, like he thought he was hot stuff or something. Although Mata Nui had never seen him before, he knew who that man was: The Tuma himself, the leader of this gang Mata Nui had been kicking around like rocks.

“What?” Mata Nui said. He kept his gun trained on the Skrall, just in case they tried anything funny. “What do you mean by that?”

The Tuma beckoned to someone in the shadows and soon three Skrall emerged from behind him. They were carrying three very familiar beings in their hands, two Glatorian and one Agori. Mata Nui couldn’t believe his eyes, but he saw his three best friends – Gresh, Ackar, and Berix – were chained and weaponless, captured by the Skrall whom they had been defeating so easily.

“What? How did you capture them?” Mata Nui asked, stunned, watching as his friends struggled against their Skrall captors. “They are the awesomest sidekicks I’ve ever had! There is no way you could have beat them!”

“Hey, I resent the sidekick thing!” Berix shouted, but the Tuma slapped him in the face to shut the Agori up.

“Your friends were arrogant,” said the Tuma as he turned back to Mata Nui. “They believed they were invincible, incapable of losing. And none of them realized there was a traitor right in their midst who had been planning to sell them all to me this entire time.”

“I knew it was Berix,” said Ackar immediately.

“Me tooba,” said Gresh, nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, I knew we couldn’t trust that Berix guy,” said Berix. “Too sane, in my opinion.”

“Uh, you do realize you are Berix, right?” asked Ackar.

“I am?” said Berix in shock. “Oh, no! I didn’t realize I was the traitor!”

“Berix, you are not the traitor,” Mata Nui sighed.

“I’m not?” said Berix as he wiped the sweat off of his brow. “Whew. Meh, I don’t care.”

“You are correct that your friend isn’t the one who sold you all out,” said the Tuma, as if ignoring what just happened. “But I will not reveal to you who the true traitor is because I’m evil that way. Now drop your gun, Mata Nui, and I might let your friends live.”

“Never!” Mata Nui shouted, raising his gun and aiming it at the Tuma’s chest from a distance. “I’m the main character. You’ll be hospitalized before you can even think of ordering your scum to hospitalize my friends!”

“Then what would you say if I hospitalized your girl instead?” said the Tuma. He turned toward another Skrall who had been idly standing by enjoying the weather and snapped, “Bring out the girl.”

The Skrall looked offended by this command and said, “Hey, bud, I’m just standing by idly enjoying the weather and-“

The Tuma raised a pistol and shot the Skrall in the chest, sending that Skrall falling off of the balcony and onto the ground below with a loud thunk. Then the Tuma turned toward the Skrall who had been standing next to the Skrall he had just shot and said, “Bring out the girl.”

“Yes, sir!” the Skrall said fearfully as he ran over to a nearby control panel.

He pressed a large red button and immediately a giant, metal cage erupted from the sand not too far from the fight, coming up so fast that it sent the corpses that had been covering it flying everywhere. Mata Nui looked upon the cage’s contents with horror, for he could see, lying unconscious on the cage floor, a bound and gagged Kiina. She looked okay despite obvious head injuries, but Mata Nui was furious.

“How dare you harm my girl!” Mata Nui roared as he turned back to the Tuma. “I’ll hospitalize you pain! You and your whole army!”

Mata Nui jumped onto the Skrall in front of him and used the warrior as a springboard. He jumped through the air, raising his gun and aiming it directly at the Tuma’s head. One shot would wipe the smirk off the Tuma’s face instantly.

“Hospitalize them,” the Tuma said carelessly to his minions. “And the girl, too, now that she isn’t useful anymore.”

Mata Nui stopped in midair, watching in horror as the Skrall aimed guns at his friends’ heads. Ackar looked resigned to his fate, Gresh was panicking and struggling to break free, and Berix was looking down the barrel of the gun aimed in his face like he was trying to see what was inside it.

“You wouldn’t,” said Mata Nui, just floating there in midair without any support.

“I would,” said the Tuma, smiling. “Even if you do manage to hospitalize me, Mata Nui, my army shall devour you like a dog devouring a ham. You and your friends will be hospitalized and this will be the most depressing comedy ever.”

Mata Nui gritted his teeth. He was in absolutely no position to win. The Tuma was right; hospitalize the Tuma and the Skrall would just hospitalize him and his friends. But he also knew that if he gave up, the Tuma would probably hospitalize him anyway. It was a lose-lose situation no matter how you look at it and Mata Nui could only feel despair as he realized he had only one half reasonable choice.

“Fine,” said Mata Nui as he floated to the ground in front of the Tuma. “I give up. You win.”

Mata Nui held out his 40kMGA, which the Tuma reached out for. But it immediately transformed back into Click, who scurried off of Mata Nui’s hand and landed on the ground painfully before getting back up on its spindly legs and scurrying off somewhere. Mata Nui was surprised by this, because he had forgotten that his gun could transform into a bug.

“Take him and his friends away,” the Tuma ordered his Skrall. “Throw them in the prisons. If they don’t have ten billion and a half dollars on them, then we shall hospitalize the girl at sunset!”

“Yay!” all of the Skrall bellowed in unison, their voices so loud that the foundations of the building actually cracked.

A Skrall came up behind Mata Nui and locked hard metal handcuffs around our hero’s hands. Mata Nui offered no resistance as he and his friends were lead underneath the building to the jail cells, where they would be kept until the Tuma decided to finish them off.

This looks like it is going to be one depressing comedy, Mata Nui thought as the jail cell door was shut in his face. Very depressing indeed.

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

The four once-proud heroes sat in their small, dank jail cell almost all of them feeling depressed about one thing or another. Mata Nui was sad because he knew Kiina was going to be executed any moment now and there was nothing he could do. Ackar was depressed because he knew that he was going to be executed any moment and there was nothing he could do about it. Gresh believed all hope was lost and so sat in a corner, counting the particles of dust he could see by the light of the torch.

Berix, meanwhile, felt sad because he was going to miss his soaps. When he voiced this concern, Ackar snapped, “We’re all going to be hospitalized and you’re worried about soap operas?”

“But this is the episode where we find out whether Jane really is Bill’s stepbrother or not!” said Berix anxiously. “It’s like the biggest episode of the season!”

“The most recent episode said that he might have been lying,” said Berix. “But now, without any TV, I don’t know whether Joe really was lying or not! The suspense is hospitalizing me!”

“We need to find a way out of here,” said Mata Nui, getting to his feet and feeling all the walls for any sort of weak spot he could smash. “Otherwise we’ll be stuck discussing the relations of characters in soap operas for the rest of our short lives.”

“But there is no way out,” said Ackar miserably. “I checked. I used to build jails, you know, for fun, and I know that this cell is pretty tightly designed.”

“How so?” asked Mata Nui.

“Well, for one, the inner walls are made of three or four thick layers of stone,” said Ackar as he felt along the barriers. “Then, the second shell is made out of three hundred foot thick titanium. And the outer shell appears to be made out of six thousand feet of pure Styrofoam, the strongest substance in the universe.”

“Stone and titanium we can deal with,” Mata Nui said. “But I am not so sure about Styrofoam.”

“Whichba means that we areba hospitalized,” said Gresh.

“No, we can’t be hospitalized!” said Mata Nui determinedly. “We’ve been in worse situations than this before, haven’t we? Don’t you guys remember how we escaped that pit of rapidly rising lava that contained acid-spitting crocodiles while ‘The Banana Splits’ played over and over again in the background?”

“I was nearly driven insane by that song,” said Ackar with a shudder. “But yeah, I remember how we hospitalized a bunch of crocodiles and then built a staircase out of them to escape.”

“But there’s no crocodiles for us to use to escape this time, are there?” asked Berix, looking around as though he expected some reptiles to appear. “Even I don’t think we’re getting out of this one alive, Mata Nui.”

Mata Nui wanted to shout and yell at them like a spoiled brat who didn’t get what he wanted, but he knew deep down just how right they were. There was no way to escape. No one knew they were here; the walls were made out of nigh impenetrable substances such as Styrofoam; they had no weapons; and they were going to miss their soaps, too. Life looked very grim and for a moment Mata Nui considered just giving up there and then, since he and his friends had absolutely no hope of survival. Who would rescue them in their time of need anyway?

It was then that the jail door suddenly flung open and a badly-wounded Skrall stumbled in, a key in his hand. The Skrall was the same one Mata Nui had seen the Tuma shoot earlier due to his disobedience, but he had no idea what this Skrall was doing here.

“Go!” the Skrall ordered, pointing toward the door. “Go quickly! You must stop the Tuma and save your girl before the execution begins!”

“Hold on there,” said Ackar, before the others could get to the door. He pointed at the Skrall suspiciously and asked, “Just why are you saving us anyway? Aren’t we the enemy?”

“I am no longer loyal to the Tuma,” said the Skrall, shaking his head. “After he shot me, I decided to rescue you four, for you are the only heroes who can stop him. You must defeat him, or else we are all doomed!”

“Well, I have no idea what the Tuma is planning, but sure, we’ll go kick his butt to Aqua Magna,” said Mata Nui. “But we’ll need weapons.”

The Skrall threw four pistols at them, which the four heroes caught in surprise. Mata Nui checked his; it was fully loaded and ready to be used.

“That was all I could get for you,” the Skrall said as the others examined their new toys. “I know it is not much, but-“

“This is more than enough,” said Ackar, looking back up at the Skrall. “Thanks, I guess. Let’s go, guys!”

Ackar, Gresh, and Berix ran right past the Skrall. Mata Nui followed, but stopped and turned to the Skrall, as if he’d just remembered something.

“You are a good person,” said Mata Nui. “That is why I will kill you last.”

So Mata Nui ran off after the others, leaving behind a Skrall who began to question his own wisdom of letting four psychos free. He decided he would regret it later. For now, he would get out of here as fast as he could. Heads were about to go flying and he didn’t want one of them to be his.

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

The Tuma stood high above his many legions of Skrall, watching as the sun set in the west. In only a few minutes, he would hospitalize the pitiful girl named Kiina just to be evil. True, he didn’t get the ten billion and a half dollars in cash like he’d wanted, but he figured he could always rob a bank to get what he needed anyway.

“Today, my minions, you shall watch as I hospitalize this girl because her boyfriend did not give me my money!” the Tuma announced to the crowd of Skrall and bone hunters, all of which screamed and shouted. The Tuma was quite sure he had just seen one of the Skrall exploded because he had been so excited, which didn’t both the Tuma. It just added to the moment.

He looked at Kiina, who was on her knees and chained next to him. “Any last words, girl?”

She looked up at him and snapped, “All I want to say is that you’re the worst written action movie villain ever.”

“That’s what they all say,” said the Tuma as he aimed his hand cannon at her face, “which is why I think you made a poor selection of last words on such a weak insult. Good bye, young woman. Today marks a new era of my awesomeness!”

Just before he could pull the trigger, however, the back of the army literally exploded, sending massive shockwaves throughout the rest of the army that caused them to scatter in confusion. The Tuma lifted his cannon and looked around for the source of the explosion, but all he could see were flames that consumed everything around them.

Then four beings walked out of the flames, cocking their guns and looking tough. The Tuma couldn’t believe his eyes, but there was no denying Mata Nui and the crew walking free toward him, ready to kick his butt as soon as their feet came within contact of it.

“How did you escape?” the Tuma shouted in shock.

“You really should treat your minions more kindly,” Mata Nui replied as he aimed his pistol at the Tuma. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be as stupid as most movie villains tend to be.”

“Mata Nui!” Kiina yelled. “Where the heck have you been? I’ve been tied up and forced to sleep in a very uncomfortable cage! I’ve been waiting for you this entire time and-“

“Kiina, don’t worry,” said Mata Nui, cutting her off quickly. “I just got distracted by bone hunters, personifications of the weather, and people from the past who held grudges against my friends. I will rescue you as soon as I kick the Tuma’s big butt to the next universe and back, okay?”

“Okay,” said Kiina, pouting. “But these ropes are really uncomfortable.”

The Tuma jumped off of the platform and landed in the middle of the flaming battlefield. He held up his free hand and snapped his fingers.

Immediately, the scattered Skrall and bone hunter forces regrouped behind their leader. Although most of them appeared to be on fire, the Tuma’s orders seemed to matter more to them than their own well-being, apparently. Either that or they were somehow immune to the fire and thus were not as badly affected as they had originally let on.

Regardless of the reasons, the fact was that the Tuma now had a force of millions strong assembled behind him. Mata Nui was not worried about the millions of Skrall and bone hunters he and his friends would have to face. He figured the Tuma was worse than all of them put together, which was exactly why Mata Nui would take the Tuma head on.

“All right, guys,” Mata Nui said to Ackar, Gresh, and Berix, all of whom were now aiming their pistols at the army. “Let’s go kick some sassafras and show these badly-written and underdeveloped movie villains just who the heck we are!”

With a yell, the four heroes charged the army. The army also charged them, swords swinging and guns firing. At the head of the army was the Tuma himself, his red eyes glowing so brightly they almost blinded Mata Nui. However, Mata Nui, at the head of his little brigade, met the Tuma’s eyes head on.

Who knows what will happen when these two forces clash? Will any living thing on Bara Magna survive when they collide? Will the universe itself crumple beneath the sheer awesomeness that was about to erupt?

Possibly. Or maybe everyone would die and this would just be another dark smudge in the history of the universe that some careless scribe will accidentally wipe off of the paper he is supposed to be copying due to his disinterest. Who knows?

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

When the two forces collided, it was like an atomic bomb fifty thousand times its original strength had gone off.

That’s what it looked like to Kiina, anyway, who watched as the explosion rocked the canyon, leveling whole buildings and creating huge fissures in the ground in which several Skrall and bone hunters fell. Somehow her platform hadn’t been hit at all, but she was so distracted by the fight going on that she didn’t bother to question the strangeness of that.

Over to the right, she could see one of Mata Nui’s friends – that old coot named Ackar – taking down a thousand Skrall and bone hunters with every shot of his pistol. When he ran out of bullets, he threw the gun aside – which exploded, by the way – and jumped headfirst into the startled crowd of bone hunters and Skrall, tearing through them like they were made out of paper, which they were.

To the far left she saw Gresh – that guy whom she couldn’t understand due to his bizarre way of speaking – leaping from Skrall to Skrall, bone hunter to bone hunter, apparently without any regard as to where he was going. Kiina had no idea what he was up to, but she figured he knew what he was doing, since he was one of Mata Nui’s friends and all.

And in the center of the field – fighting on a single slab of rock extending from the heart of the planet’s core – were the Tuma and Mata Nui fighting so epically Kiina could barely see what they were doing. Based on what she could see, the Tuma was using his hand cannon like a sword, while Mata Nui blocked and defended with his pistol like it was a dagger. Both fighters moved faster than lightning, which hurt Kiina’s head because she couldn’t follow the fight very well.

“Cool fight, eh?” said Berix, sitting next to her with a bag of popcorn.

“Yeah, it’s- Hey!” said Kiina, nearly jumping out of her armor in surprise. “Berix, why aren’t you helping Mata Nui and the others kick the Tuma to Mars?”

“Why would I be?” asked Berix, tilting his head to one side as he stuffed popcorn into his mouth. “They don’t look like they need my help.”

“Yeah, but still,” Kiina argued, “you look bad sitting here like this. At least free me if you want to make yourself useful!”

“Maybe later,” said Berix, yawning as a bone hunter went flying over his head. “I think I want to take a nap for now.”

Just then, innumerable Skrall and bone hunters appeared out of nowhere, clearly aiming for Berix. Kiina looked desperately at Berix, but the Agori merely yawned once more and curled into a ball, like he was ready for a good, long nap.

“Do I have to do everything myself?” Kiina sighed.

Displaying an unprecedented amount of strength, she snapped the iron chains that had shackled her arms and legs together and immediately leapt to her feet. Then she seized the nearest Skrall, took his rifle, and hurled that Skrall – who was now crying like the world’s biggest baby – into the air. She shot the flying Skrall, who exploded into a shower of fireworks when the bullet collided with his armor.

The other Skrall and bone hunters all cheered at the sight of fireworks, which allowed Kiina to move in and begin mowing down an endless amount of cannon fodder minions. She shot, she kicked, she punched, and she danced (don’t ask) as she fought the Skrall and bone hunters, while Berix napped on, completely oblivious to the war brewing all around him.

-

Gresh fell to his knees to pick up a shiny penny he saw on the ground. That was fortunate for him, for that one move allowed him to dodge hundreds of thousands of bullets that would have given him more holes than Swiss cheese.

Because the penny was so shiny and clean, the light reflecting off it transformed into a concentrated beam of energy that totally disintegrated about a quarter of the Skrall and bone hunters he was fighting. Not that he noticed that he had a super dangerous weapon in his hands; he deposited the penny into his wallet and continued fighting like nothing had happened.

Gresh ducked, narrowly avoiding a gigantic rock that had been hurled at him. However, as the rock passed, Gresh grabbed it and – while it still flew – he climbed on top of it and jumped up into the air well above the enemy soldiers below. He aimed his pistol and fired off three hundred bullets, which struck their targets and took out a thousand with each shot.

He performed about 60 summersaults in midair before landing. Then he whirled around and continued whirling, spinning so fast he transformed into a tornado that sucked in any and all nearby Skrall and bone hunters. Many tried to run, but none escaped Tornado Gresh TM as it spun devastatingly fast throughout the area.

As the Skrall and bone hunters swirled inside of his tornado, Gresh struck at them, hitting each individual warrior 1,000.2 times each. This was a special technique that Gresh had thought up literally just this second, combining his awesomeness movement with the power of the tornado to make an absolutely unstoppable force of awesome.

Every Skrall or bone hunter he defeated went flying out of his tornado. He sent one particular Skrall flying so fast that he left orbit and crashed into Aqua Magna, which was floating happily in space at that moment. Others were merely thrown more than halfway across the desert, while others splattered against the skyline, becoming new constellations.

When Gresh stopped spinning, he was so dizzy that the entire world actually was spinning. He stumbled for a bit, giggling like a five-year-old on sugar, until he regained balance with a supreme force of will that surpassed that of Zeus himself.

Zeus wasn’t happy with that, however, and as the heavens opened the god of the sky hurled a lightning bolt at Gresh. Gresh noticed it coming just in time, however, and deflected it with his pistol.

The lightning bolt struck Zeus in the chest, sending the god crashing backwards into Mount Olympus, which somehow caused Mount Olympus to fall from the sky and crash land in the distance.

“Thaba be what yuba geba for nothing, Zeus,” Gresh said, just as another army of Skrall and bone hunters magically appeared out of nowhere. “Oh, greaba. Now Iba goinba to have hospitalize yuba all again.”

-

Ackar had stolen a sword from one of the Skrall and was battling sixteen different swordsmen at once. He blocked all of their moves with a single, swift motion of his blade. Then, noting that their swords were caught on his blade, he hurled the sixteen swordsmen over his shoulder at the rest of the army. Predictably they exploded upon making contact with the other forces, causing the Skrall and bone hunters to scatter in panic.

Just as Ackar was about to cause even more chaos, two red armored hands popped out of the earth and seized his ankles.

“Ah! Zombies!” Ackar shouted as he stumbled backwards.

“Not zombies!” An ugly armored head burst of the ground, grinning crazily at Ackar. “But Stronius!”

Ackar watched in amazement as the bulky Skrall burst out of the ground. This Stronius fellow wore deep black armor, which contrasted with his dark red skin. He also carried a gigantic club that looked suspiciously like an oversized rattle to Ackar. In fact, he could have sworn he’d heard some rattling noises from within the club when Stronius had risen.

“Who the censored word are you?” Ackar demanded.

“I am Stronius, ho ho!” the Skrall answered as he swung his battle rattle around. “I have risen from the earth to meet thee in combat! For clearly, you are the equal of your leader and I, being the marvelous and humble second-in-command of the Tuma, have come to challenge you, oh old man!”

“I didn’t catch anything you said except for two words,” said Ackar as he kicked two loaded rifles into his hands and cocked them. “Old man. I am not an old man.”

He fired both guns at Stronius, who deflected the bullets with his battle rattle. Then, moving with surprising speed, Stronius charged forward and smashed his battle rattle into Ackar’s abdomen.

Surprised that he’d actually been hit, Ackar went flying into a nearby crowd of Skrall. And, as usual, when he collided with them they all exploded, but Ackar was unaffected by the flames. Actually, he used them to his advantage.

“Arise, King of Fire, and slay this fool!” Ackar ordered the flames.

Without hesitation the form of a man appeared in the midst of the flames, a man wearing red royal robes of a king. The King of Fire heeded Ackar’s orders and unleashed a three hundred thousand foot tall and wide wall of fire at Stronius.

But Stronius had his own tricks up his sleeve and shouted, “Queen of Earth, protect thy servant from the oncoming flames of the King of Fire!”

At first, Ackar was sure Stronius was just babbling like a moron, for the flames appeared to pass over Stronius.

However, when the fire passed, there was a Stronius-sized bubble of earth were Stronius had been standing previously. It was completely blackened by the flames, but looked pretty sturdy and safe. Ackar wondered where it had came from when Stronius smashed his way through the bubble with his battle rattle, laughing heartily as he did so.

“Ho ho! The King of Fire and the Queen of Earth are equally matched, it seems!” Stronius yelled, shaking his battle rattle madly in the air. “But I do not need the Queen of Earth’s help to crush you, my fine gray friend!”

“Nor do I need the King of Fire to defeat you!” Ackar roared as he threw aside the two rifles he held and charged at Stronius with his sword.

The two combatants charged each other, yelling so loudly that it was nigh impossible to hear the rattling sounds the battle rattle was making as Stronius bumped around. When their weapons clashed, the two warriors glared at each other, each trying to push the other away with all of his strength.

“Give up,” Stronius told Ackar as energy began crackling around them. “My rattle is made out of stupidium, the strongest substance in the universe. Not even the Great Beings themselves could break it, even if they put all of their strength together!”

“So you think I can’t break it, huh?” said Ackar, straining to hold back the colossal Skrall as best as he could. “Sorry, but I guess you just don’t know me very well then.”

Ackar rolled out of the way, causing Stronius to go stumbling forward. Ackar raised his blade and struck Stronius’ armor, but it was so thick and powerful that he could not even scratch it.

“Ha ho! You cannot pierce my armor, either!” Stronius announced as he swung his battle rattle at the old warrior. “Only a truly mad man can destroy stupidium!”

Then I’ll just have to get madder, Ackar thought as he clenched his sword. Just how mad I’ll have to get remains to be seen.

-

The Tuma unleashed a flurry of bullets at Mata Nui from his four back mounted guns. Mata Nui rolled underneath the attack and aimed his pistol directly at the Tuma’s head. He pulled the trigger, but the bullet merely bounced harmless off of the Tuma’s head.

“Can’t you see you cannot win?” the Tuma snarled as he slapped Mata Nui’s gun out of his hand. “I am the mighty Tuma, the strongest warrior of them all! Why do you think a weakling like you could defeat me?”

“Because I have the power of love!” Mata Nui shouted as he rolled underneath the Tuma’s legs. “And the power of awesomeness, both of which are exactly the same thing!”

Mata Nui leapt to his feet and, before the Tuma could react, ripped one of the shot guns off of the Tuma’s back. The Tuma cried out in pain as Mata Nui shot the Tuma’s back at point blank range.

But this did nothing more than enrage the Tuma, who whirled around and began swinging his hand cannon like a sword at our hero. Mata Nui countered or deflected every strike, but it soon became clear that the Tuma’s cannon was far stronger than Mata Nui’s own gun. As if to prove a point, the next blow from the Tuma created a huge crack in the side of Mata Nui’s weapon.

If only I had my 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle right now, Mata Nui thought angrily as he dodged, Matrix-style, a devastating blow from the Tuma that appeared to destroy air. If I had that, then the Tuma would go down easily.

But Mata Nui did not have his 40kMGA rifle on him at the moment, so he’d have to make do with what he did have. And hopefully it would be enough to kick the Tuma all the way to Aqua Magna.

The Tuma shot a volley of bullets at Mata Nui again. This time, Mata Nui jumped and landed on the incoming bullets. Moving faster than he ever had before, Mata Nui leaped off of the projectiles, performed 70 summersaults in midair, and then delivered an almighty kick directly to the Tuma’s head, an attack that would have normally dislocated all of the bones in a normal being’s body.

As Mata Nui landed, he looked up and saw that the Tuma, apparently, was not a normal being, for all of his bones appeared to be intact. The only thing to indicate he had been kicked that hard in the face was the fact that there was a bad dent in his helmet’s forehead; beyond that, he looked just fine, although quite murderous.

“I did not want to see your feet!” the Tuma roared as he raised his arms to the sky. “The mighty Tuma shall crush you beneath his feet!”

The Tuma actually jumped into the air like an acrobat and landed hard on Mata Nui. Or at least, he would have, had Mata Nui not jumped out of the way in time to avoid being crushed into a yellow pancake with attitude.

“I don’t want to see your feet, either, Tuma,” said Mata Nui as he aimed his gun at the Tuma again. “In fact, all I want to see is your hospitalized state of being.”

He shot the gun at the side of the Tuma’s head, where a small amount of flesh was open. The bullet pierced the Tuma’s neck, sending him flying away from Mata Nui. He landed on the ground hard, although because this is a kid’s comedy there is no blood. Instead, candy flowed from the newly created wound, which would be later distributed to all of the poor and needy kids around the globe (although what they needed was REAL food rather than candy, but eh, candy’s good too).

The Tuma looked hospitalized. Mata Nui sighed, knowing his adventure had finally come to an end. So he turned around, but as he did so, he heard a loud groan behind him that sounded too much like someone he knew.

Turning back around, Mata Nui watched with shock as the Tuma slowly got to his knees, coughing out candy from his mouth as he did so.

The Tuma held some of the candy in his hand, which slowly trickled through his fingers like sand. He looked up at Mata Nui, his red eyes glowing with murderous rage.

“I will kil- er, hospitalize you, Mata Nui, for daring to shoot the mighty Tuma!” the Tuma snarled as he got back up, wiping candy and sand off of his armor as he did so. “Today you will be hospitalized because I will hospitalize you hospitalize!”

Mata Nui sighed in frustration. “Don’t you ever give up? But I’ll take you on anyway. Looks like you need a little lesson from Mata Nui’s school of hard knocks. And I am the teacher, who is going to give you an ‘F’ for fail if you don’t give up quick!”

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Kiina performed a back flip to avoid having her head sliced off by a Skrall, then seized that same Skrall and used his body as a meat shield, catching the bullets of the thousands of Skrall and bone hunters who’d tried to shoot her.

Throwing aside the lifeless corpse, she ran and then jumped up so high into the air that she became a little less than a dark speck in the evening sky. Then she came falling down so hard that she crashed straight into the middle of the army, creating a gigantic explosion that would have put an atomic bomb to shame.

She arose from the smoking pile of wood and corpses and shook her head, feeling a little dizzy.

“Whoa, that was crazy,” said Kiina as she stumbled forward a bit. “I could have- Whoa!”

Kiina nearly tripped over a napping Berix, who had somehow got a blanket, pillow, and teddy bear into his possession. Berix looked completely fine, despite having been in the vicinity of the explosion. Not even his armor was black from the flames, which Kiina thought was odd.

“Hey, dummy, wake up,” Kiina said, kicking the Agori in the side. “Now’s not the time to be sleeping, Mr. Psycho!”

It looked like she had said the magic words, for Berix’s eyes flew open, but they were now red instead of green. Two double barrel guns appeared in his holsters and, as he got up, Kiina thought he was acting really weird. Well, weirder than normal, anyway.

“I am Double Barrel Berix,” said Berix in a monotone, robotic voice. “I must now destroy all enemies.”

He drew his guns and aimed them at a fly that was buzzing by idly. As soon as he pulled the trigger, the fly exploded in a fiery rain of flames that shocked Kiina.

“Enemies terminated,” said Berix robotically as he shoved his guns back into his holsters. “Berix-bot returning to normal status. Please do not remove the memory card or open the console while progress is saving.”

Immediately, Berix’s head drooped forward. Kiina hesitantly reached out to touch him, to see if he was still alive.

Without warning Berix’s head went upright before Kiina could touch him, causing her to yelp and jump back in surprise.

Kiina was speechless at how normal he was acting now. “What was with that . . . how did you . . . why did you . . .”

“Ooo, we’re speaking in fragments today?” Berix said eagerly. “Okay, I’ll go. Kiina. How’s life I need ten stacks of how do you pronounce what is I saw ten over there eating oh no!“

“Never mind,” Kiina sighed. “Look, I don’t see any other Skrall or bone hunters around here-“

“Except for that one!” Berix spun around and shot the Skrall before it could get away.

“Berix, that Skrall was already hospitalized,” said Kiina.

“Oh, I knew that,” said Berix. Kiina doubted that. “I was just, er, testing you! Also, Metus once told me that you have to shot a corpse after it is hospitalized if you don’t want it to turn into a zombie and eat your brain.”

“Metus . . .” Kiina gasped. “Berix, we gotta find Mata Nui and the others. We have to tell them who the traitor is.”

“Is it the butler? ‘Cause if it is, I knew it was him,” said Berix as they ran along the destroyed area.

“No, but someone much worse,” said Kiina. “And if we don’t tell someone, I don’t think any of us will survive."

-

Ackar seized Stronius’s club and wrenched it out of the Skrall’s hands. However, unbeknownst to Ackar, the club weighed five billion pounds, so he dropped it almost immediately due to its sheer weight.

“Gah, how can you hold this thing for more than three seconds?” Ackar demanded as he shook his hands, which were sore from trying to hold the battle rattle. “Seriously, I’m surprised you can actually lift the darn thing.”

Stronius bent over and lifted the battle rattle like it was a toy made out of plastic. “It is not that I am strong – although I most certainly am – it is that you are weak. Weaklings can’t wield five billion pound rattles; only the mighty can.”

Had Stronius not seen it coming, it was likely Ackar would have pierced the elite Skrall’s face. But as it was, Stronius grabbed Ackar’s sword and snapped it in two with ease. Shocked, Ackar got hit directly in the face by the battle rattle, which sent him flying several feet away from Stronius.

Ackar landed on the sand hard, breathing heavily. His skull felt like it was about to split open any second now, but he couldn’t give up. He had not come all this way just to get beat by some guy with an oversized rattle.

Struggling to his feet, Ackar looked up in time to see Stronius jump and leap through the air at him, a glint of triumph in his eyes. There was no way to dodge Stronius now; he was coming too fast. So Ackar could either sit there and get flattened by a giant baby’s rattle or else try to break it. Since Ackar didn’t want to go down in history as the guy who got killed by an oversized rattle, he chose the latter, however unrealistic it might be.

Ackar reared back as Stronius came closer. Ackar was channeling all of his energy into his fist, putting every last ounce of strength he had into this one final attack. If he failed, he would die, but since he had no plans to die tonight, he knew he wasn’t going to fail.

Just as Stronius’ battle rattle came within three feet of Ackar’s face, the hero threw his fist at the weapon made of stupidium. He put so much force into this attack that he actually stopped Stronius in midair. Shocked, Stronius cried out, “What? How can you stop my battle rattle so easily?”

“’Cause I learned to give up baby toys a long time ago, Stronius,” Ackar answered as he pressed harder against the rattle, “so you can’t kill me even if you tried.”

Yelling loudly, Ackar sunk his fist so deeply into the battle rattle that it actually exploded. His fist kept going, however, and struck Stronius right in the middle of the eyes, shattering the elite Skrall’s helmet into thousands of pieces.

Stronius, screaming (or perhaps crying; Ackar couldn’t tell), went flying into the sky. He collided with Mount Olympus, which Zeus had just spent so much time putting back into the heavens. Mount Olympus crashed landed onto Bara Magna again as Zeus spouted a bunch of cuss words in Ancient Greek that, if translated, would have made this comedy jump straight from PG to XXX.

Ackar, panting hard, lowered his fist, which looked surprisingly good despite having just punched through stupidium. He felt like he had succeeded, but he had no time to celebrate, for as soon as the writer got bored of this scene Ackar fell backwards, sleeping soundly from all of the fighting he had just done.

-

Mata Nui hid behind a low stone wall as the Tuma searched the area for him.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, Mata Nui,” the Tuma growled in a low, dangerous-sounding voice. “Or else the Tuma will tear this whole world apart to find you!”

I need my 40kMGA, Mata Nui thought as he quickly peeped over his barrier to see if the Tuma was still there. I am certain it is the only way to stop the Tuma. Nothing else has worked so far. Not even lodging a bullet in his neck worked.

But that brought up the earlier dilemma again; he had no 40kMGA. So, like before, he would have to make due with what he had until he could figure out a way to stop the Tuma once and for all.

He noticed a green Skrall shield lying nearby. He recognized it as the Tuma’s, which had somehow ended up over there due to an unforeseen set of embarrassing circumstances that Mata Nui did not feel like repeating here. He reached out and grabbed it. One attempt to lift it proved difficult, for it appeared to weigh several thousand pounds. However, he managed to hold it firmly in his grasp.

Then he shot straight up and yelled, “Hey, Tuma! Catch this!”

Mata Nui charged the shield with energy and hurled it at the Tuma. The Tuma turned around too late to dodge or deflect the attack. The shield struck him head on and exploded, creating a huge dust cloud that temporarily blocked the Tuma from Mata Nui’s vision. Sand got in Mata Nui’s eyes, which he furiously wiped out so as to not allow the Tuma an opportunity to strike him.

At first, Mata Nui thought his attack had finished the Tuma off. However, as the dust settled, he saw the Tuma standing exactly where he had been before, with his head flung back as though it had been blown back by the explosion. Then, his neck creaking painfully, the Tuma looked back at Mata Nui with an amused smile on his face, like he was thinking, So you think throwing an exploding shield at me will stop me? As if!

Then the Tuma charged. He body slammed into Mata Nui, catching the hero off-guard. Then he seized Mata Nui by the throat and hurled him about two dozen feet from the gang leader. Mata Nui skidded along the sand and crashed into another low stone wall, dazed as he watched the sun set in the distance.

“This is what happens to fools who defy the mighty Tuma!” the Tuma said as he advanced on Mata Nui, aiming his hand cannon at our hero’s face. “They all taste the bitter flavor of defeat!”

For the first time in his life, Mata Nui began to actually panic. None of his attacks had even been slightly strong enough to defeat the Tuma and he had no weapon anymore. He almost despaired as Death himself loomed ahead in Mata Nui’s vision. He could just imagine the grim reaper raising his scythe, eager to collect another soul for his harvest.

Then Mata Nui felt something crawling up the side of his body. He glanced in that direction and saw a familiar purple kid appeal bug that had fought beside him in the great war ten years ago. It was Click, which meant Mata Nui was going to kick some butt again.

One Click reached Mata Nui’s shoulder, the bug rolled down his arm until he landed in Mata Nui’s open palm. Then Click instantly transformed into the 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle. As Mata Nui felt the familiar weight of the gun in his hand, he vowed to never write Click off as merely kid appeal ever again. Except he probably would, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

Then the Tuma raised his cannon and fired, while simultaneously unleashing three dozen bullets from each of his three remaining back-mounted guns. The cannon ball and bullets were all heading for Mata Nui. Any normal person would have given up any hope of salvation, but Mata Nui was no normal person. He had his 40kMGA and he knew how to use it.

Mata Nui raised his 40kMGA rifle and somehow caught all 36 bullets plus the cannon ball in his gun’s barrel. Then, activating its special ability, Mata Nui aimed his gun straight in the face of the now startled Tuma, smiling triumphantly all the while.

“Looks like you’re about to figure out what happens to those who defy the mighty Mata Nui!” Mata Nui shouted as he unleashed a huge energy blast from the 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle at the Tuma’s chest.

When the blast collided with the Tuma, he immediately went flying toward the sunset. His armor glowed with crackling energy as he cried out, “This cannot be! I am the mighty Tuma! There is no way that I can-“

Tuma crash landed right underneath the sun. Dazed from the blow, the Tuma looked up and saw a bunch of midgets call narglesnaps pushing a gigantic, glowing yellow ball of heat and flame toward him, which he too late realized was the sun itself.

“No!” the Tuma shouted in horror. “I am the mighty Tuma! The mighty Tuma is invincible! I cannot be-“

And, as the day turned to night, the mighty Tuma was hospitalized.

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Hmm. While I think I can safely say I prefer Imploded, this is pretty good as well. The depiction of Gresh is pretty spot on, actually.

Click's transformation in the last chappy was pretty humorous as well.

-MT

Yeah, it's not as good as TLI, but thanks for the reply anyway.

Time for a new chapter:

Chapter 14: What Should Be the Ending But Isn’t

Gresh had stood dumbfounded as he watched the Tuma go flying directly beneath the sun and then get crushed by that ball of heat and light. He had seen and experienced a lot of strange things in his life, but that had to take the cake.

He was standing alone on a pile of Skrall and bone hunter corpses, completely oblivious to his own accomplishments. One Skrall tried to get away, but without even looking Gresh shot a thin, deadly beam of energy and silenced the Skrall instantly.

At that moment Kiina and Berix appeared, Kiina looking like she had just fought a war, while Berix looked like he had just taken a nice, refreshing nap.

“Broke myself out,” said Kiina with a shrug. She gestured to Berix, who was staring into the distance as the last traces of sunshine disappeared. “He just slept while I took out an army of Skrall and bone hunters.”

“Cool,” said Gresh as he jumped down from the pile of corpses. “Nowba where didba Ackar go?”

“Right here,” said a Clint Eastwood-like voice behind them, causing them all to jump in surprise.

The party of three looked around and saw Ackar, looking a little scratched up but okay overall, walking toward them with a broken Skrall sword in hand.

“Hey, Ackar!” said Berix brightly, watching as the old man approached the group. “What’d you do?”

“Punched a guy into Mount Olympus, causing it to fall,” Ackar replied. “What’d you do?”

“I slept,” Berix responded. “Sleep is important, you know.”

“Right,” said Ackar, unimpressed. Then he looked at Kiina and Gresh and said, “So, I assume you guys saw the Tuma go flying?”

“Yeah,” said Kiina, nodding eagerly. “I know of only one guy who could do that: Mata Nui!”

“He musba have succeeded after allba,” said Gresh. “Does that meanba that the story isba over?”

“Most likely not,” said Ackar with a shrug. “I figure the author has a couple more stupid plot twists in mind to stretch this thing out even longer than it should be.”

Mata Nui got to his feet, brushing sand off of his armor as he did so. He was relieved that the Tuma was finally defeated. It meant he could finally show Kiina that cybernetic demon wolf he had captured earlier. Then he, Kiina, and the others could throw a huge party in his honor once they got home, although Mata Nui figured that any party involving Berix would end with someone going to jail for murder, theft, or jaywalking.

Oh, well, Mata Nui thought as he laid his gun on his shoulder and turned to leave. That’s what happens when you befriend a psycho inmate who escaped from an asylum. It’s one of those things in life you just can’t avoid.

Mata Nui stopped, frowning. He thought he was forgetting something really important, but whatever it was, exactly, he could not remember. Something about a traitor betraying them or something like that. Mata Nui didn’t think it was all that important now that the Tuma was gone. It wasn’t like the traitor would just pop out of nowhere and reveal his dastardly plan to Mata Nui right before he succeeded, right?

At that moment, a greasy voice called, “Going somewhere, Mata Nui?”

“David Leisure?” Mata Nui said as he looked for the being, who was nowhere to be seen.

“No, but people often confuse me with him for some reason,” the voice answered.

Then a small, white-armored Agori with a smug grin popped out of the sand. He was familiar to Mata Nui, but he could not figure out what this particular Agori was doing here. Unless . . .

“Metus,” said Mata Nui, his voice hardening. “You are the traitor, aren’t you?”

“Why, I have no idea what you are talking about, Mata Nui,” said Metus as he casually picked up a discarded gun and examined it. “What traitor?”

“The Tuma said that there was a traitor within our group,” said Mata Nui as his hands tightened around his gun. “Berix thought it was himself, but the Tuma shot down that suggestion. I had no idea who it might be at the time, but looking back I can see you were the one behind it all.”

“Explain, Mata Nui,” said Metus, who sounded unconvinced.

“First, the cybernetic demon wolf,” Mata Nui began, his eyes never leaving Metus. “You set that up near my place to distract me and get me out of the house. Otherwise, I’d have gotten in your way and the Skrall wouldn’t have been able to kidnap Kiina.”

“Ha, that’s one wild theory,” said Metus as he threw the gun aside and picked up a sword. “Don’t cybernetic demon wolves run wild around your place anyway?”

“Yes, but this particular wolf had a cry like a dolphin,” Mata Nui said. “Cybernetic demon wolves bark like chickens, not dolphins. That was when I first realized something was wrong.”

“Interesting,” said Metus as he spun the sword in his hand. “I know everything, but I didn’t know that.”

“Not a lot of people do,” said Mata Nui seriously. “Anyway, then there was the bone hunter ambush in Sandray canyon, right at the beginning of the expedition. It was so random and out of nowhere that I could only conclude one of two things: That the author added it in to stretch this comedy or that somebody had set them to kill me and my friends before we could get too far. The latter seemed more likely to me, based on recent events.”

“What if it was both?” Metus suggested. “What if the author set the bone hunters up to kill you so he could stretch the comedy?”

Mata Nui shrugged. “That’s too crazy, even for this comedy. Anyway, then Tajun’s destruction seemed a little too complete, not to mention Strakk came absolutely out of nowhere. How could Strakk know Ackar was going to be in Tajun on that day? We hadn’t told anyone we were heading for Tajun. We didn’t even tell anyone we were leaving. So I figured somebody must have anticipated our journey to Tajun and so paid Strakk off to take us down before we could go any further.”

“Wow, your theory just gets wilder and wilder, Mata Nui,” said Metus as he tossed the sword away and lifted up a shield. “Really, Strakk is just a psycho who holds grudges for years and years. Besides, this is a badly written comedy, so he was probably there just for the lulz.”

“And after that, Malum’s attack on us,” Mata Nui continued. “Why would he attack us when we had not provoked him? Someone must have paid him off like Strakk. It was the only logical conclusion I could come to.”

Metus said nothing to this, although Mata Nui thought that the Agori did look a bit more nervous now as he swung the shield around.

“Your behavior at Tesara was strange, too,” said Mata Nui as he stroked his chin. “How you just gave that map of Roxtus to us so quickly and easily seemed awfully suspicious to me. Tornadias’ attack soon after also made me wonder. If it was possible to pay off two maniacs, could it not also be possible to pay off the personification of the tornado itself?”

“That’s stupid,” Metus muttered.

“Indeed it is, but this is a stupid comedy, so anything goes,” Mata Nui said. “Anyway, once we got to Roxtus and the Tuma told us that there was a traitor, it was then that I realized it was you. Only you had the brains to pull this mad scheme off, but I cannot fathom why you would do it in the first place. What did you hope to gain from kidnapping Kiina, allowing us to follow a very loose trail, and try to get us killed several dozen times along the way? Tell me and I will make sure you die peacefully.”

“Okay, you’re right,” Metus finally admitted. “I am the traitor. I set all of those things up, including Tornadias’ attack on you. All of it was part of my grand master plan to get ten billion and a half dollars.”

“That’s it?” said Mata Nui in disbelief. “You manipulated the Skrall and bone hunters in order to get ten billion and a half dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you still go along with the plan when it became clear that I did not have ten billion and a half dollars?” Mata Nui asked. “Seriously, what was the point?”

“Well, whatever your vague and undefined reasons for continuing your plans were, I will still kick your butt to the stars,” said Mata Nui as he rolled up his non-existent sleeves. “No one kidnaps my girl and gets away with it.”

Metus, frightened, turned to run away, but he stopped dead when he saw Ackar, Gresh, Berix, and Kiina approaching. They all looked angry. He figured they had overheard Mata Nui’s monologue, meaning they knew he was the traitor. Which meant that he didn’t think they’d let him get away so easily.

“Okay, Mata Nui,” said Metus, turning around back to our hero, who was aiming his 40kMGA at the Agori. “You want to fight? Then bring it, suckafoo!”

Metus drew his ice axe and dashed so fast Mata Nui could not get a good lock on him. As he ran faster than the speed of light, Metus hurled his axe at Mata Nui. Our hero noticed the blade coming at him just in time, however, and ducked to avoid the weapon, which went flying straight toward Kiina and the others!

The spanker! Mata Nui thought in anger as he watched the axe go hurtling toward his friends. He didn’t intend to hit me; he was aiming for the others the whole time! How can I stop it before they get hit?

But there was nothing Mata Nui could do as he watched Metus’ weapon draw ever closer to his friends.

-

As it turned out, Mata Nui didn’t need to do anything, for Ackar’s sharp eyes noticed the incoming projectile before it ever came close to them.

Gresh and Berix instantly knew what he was talking about. Back in the war, Mata Nui, Ackar, Gresh, and Berix had devised their own battle strategies, each one unique and different from the last. Most were designed to hospitalize the actual enemies, but ‘Battle Strategy Alpha Beta Gamma Omega and whatever other Greek letters we forgot’ could be used against enemy weapons as well.

So the three heroes took up their positions for the operation. Kiina, who realized something really big and possibly lethal was about to happen, quickly moved out of their way and found a relatively safe hiding spot behind a pile of hospitalized people to hide behind. Normally this move required four people, but since Mata Nui was not close enough they decided they could work with only three.

They stood in a triangular formation: Ackar at the top, Gresh in the bottom left corner, and Berix in the bottom right corner. Next, they raised their guns and charged energy through them. The three heroes waited until Metus’ axe was right in the middle of their triangle, for only then would ‘Battle Strategy Alpha Beta Gamma Omega and whatever other Greek letters we forgot’ work at its prime efficiency.

Within seconds Metus’ axe reached the exact middle of the triangle. All three of them knew they had only a split second before it moved out of position, so they shot huge blasts of energy color coordinated with their owners; Ackar’s red, Berix’s blue, and Gresh’s green.

Moving so fast they were ripping holes in reality, the energy blasts collided with the projectile at exactly the same moment, causing a gigantic multicolor explosion so huge that it would have totally annihilated the entire area and everything within it had Ackar, Berix, and Gresh not held the explosion back with their bare hands. They struggled to push the explosion back, until finally the explosion exploded, totally dissipating in the wind as the three twirled their guns in their hands and put them back in their holsters.

And yes, it was totally necessary. Every single move was completely necessary.

Metus just stood there with his mouth hanging open. “What in David Leisure’s name-“

Mata Nui, taking advantage of Metus’ surprise, darted forward and with an almighty punch that would have made Captain Falcon proud sent the Agori stumbling head over heels into a nearby building. Metus crashed through it, destroying its foundations and causing the building to collapse on the Agori as Mata Nui turned around, put on a pair of sunglasses he had pulled out of nowhere, and said, “Looks like Metus . . . just got hospitalized.”

She never got to finish her sentence, for the next moment the ruins of the building which had collapsed on Metus exploded, raining down stone and debris on everyone. A particularly large rock was about to hit Kiina, but Mata Nui – still wearing his sunglasses – leapt onto another piece of falling debris, aimed his 40kMGA, and blew the stone that was about to crush Kiina into a million pieces. Then he leapt off of the other rock and landed beside Kiina, looking as cool as possible while doing so.

Kiina looked at him exasperatedly. “You know, you could have just shot the boulder.”

“Yeah, but I felt like being over-the-top and cool today,” said Mata Nui. Then his attention was drawn to the source of the explosion. “Wait a minute, Kiina. I sense that something is arising from the Abyss.”

And he was right. Rising slowly from the Abyss was a huge behemoth of a monster. It had pure white armor stained with black in several places, like blood. Huge, icy wings extended from its back, flapping in a non-existent breeze just to look awesome. Its forty-foot-long claws extended and retracted from its gigantic limbs as it surveyed the area with cold blue eyes.

Despite this epic appearance, the monster from the Abyss still had Metus’ head. Except there were tiny little goat horns poking out of its skull, but besides that it looked exactly like Metus’ greasy little head.

“Ah, I am free!” the being roared, unleashing a sonic boom at the heavens that gave Zeus a headache. “Although my servant Metus may have failed, I have arisen again to take over the world!”

“Not if we can stop you!” Ackar shouted as he, Gresh, and Berix joined up with Kiina and Mata Nui.

“And we’ll do it with style, too,” said Berix as he put on sunglasses similar to Mata Nui’s.

“Berix, only I look cool with sunglasses,” said Mata Nui, without looking at his friend.

“You’re wearing sunglasses?” Berix asked in surprise as he looked up at the yellow-armored warrior.

“Never mind,” Mata Nui sighed. Then, addressing the beast, he shouted, “I don’t know who you are, but like Gresh said (I think he said this, anyway); we’re going to kick you and your butt straight back into the Abyss. Let’s get ‘im, guys!”

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

What is about to happen next is so epic that we cannot show it immediately. In order to make the transition on your fragile mind as smooth and peaceful as possible, you will watch Tarduk’s documentary on the ancient civilizations that existed on Bara Magna thousands of years ago:

Tarduk (off-screen): We know very little about the peoples of ancient Bara Magna; what movies they watched, what food they ate, whether they called American football ‘soccer’ or not, and what kind of socks they were.

A scene shows an ancient temple ruins.

Tarduk: Instead, we find useless stuff like ancient temples and tablets that go into extensive detail on their religious and social and cultural ideals and customs and traditions. Nothing exciting or interesting, in other words. But because we like to be as boring as possible, we shall go into detail on their religious ceremonies.

Another scene change shows a stone carving of bunch of Agori in loincloths dancing around a fire, evidently chanting something.

Tarduk: Here we can see a bunch of Agori – tribe unknown due to faded colors – performing the Stupid Dance. The Stupid Dance, as we like to call it, was how Agori back in those days used to contact the gods. According to ancient historical records, the Stupid Dance became obsolete when a man named Gregory Theodore Farshtey abolished the system due to its sheer stupidity and replaced worship of the gods with worship of the Great Beings.

A new carving pops up showing a bearded man holding what looked like a pen, scaring away a bunch of Agori from the fire.

Tarduk: This ushered in the new era in Bara Magnan history called the Era of the Great Beings. Like most of ancient history, we know little about it. All we know is that eventually something happened that totally warped the views of the Agori, changing their form of government from a theocracy to a more democratic form of government.

The next scene shows a bunch of Agori at voting booths, apparently casting votes for various candidates.

Tarduk: Due to rampant corruption in the government, however, an Agori revolutionist Kyry arose and toppled the world government, instead replacing it with a form of anarchy that still exists with us today.

The final carving shows an Agori with a flamethrower burning down the voting booths and – whether accidentally or intentionally – the Agori that had been voting in the previous scene.

Tarduk: That is all for today’s installment of “Ancient Bara Magna.” Please be here next week when we discuss the social significance of the radical change from the blue socks of the late Sandy Era Agori to the Early Watery Era Agori’s red socks and why today people always wear a blue and a red sock when traveling to Atero.

-

Ackar lay half-hospitalized on a slab of rock in the cold darkness of the night, barely breathing. He struggled to his feet, watching as his friends fought the demonic influence of Metus, which had fully risen from the Abyss and was now unleashing the forces of the place down under (not Australia, unfortunately) upon the world, which were being held back by the others.

Kiina and Gresh were back-to-back, fighting off the hordes of demons that were pouring from out of the depths of the Abyss. Kiina seized a demon, spun it above her head, and then hurled it at Gresh. Gresh whirled around and shot the demon out of the air, sending it flying straight into another army of demonic beings, annihilating the entire demonic army in one swift strike.

But more demons kept arising from out of the Abyss and Kiina and Gresh kept fighting without showing any signs of slowing down or getting weaker. In fact, they actually seemed to get stronger, if Kiina vaporizing an entire row of enemies with one blow was any indication.

Meanwhile, Berix and Mata Nui – sunglasses abandoned – were tag-teaming the Metus monster thingy, which referred to itself as Destruction. Mata Nui ran up the left arm, while Berix ran up the right arm. Destruction shot laser beams of death out of its eyes, but the two heroes either dodged or deflected the beams until they reached its head. Then, aiming their guns, they shot Destruction’s head from both sides, causing the personification of destruction to cry out in pain and shake them both off of its shoulders.

Then Destruction turned around and lifted a nearby mountain. He hurled it at Mata Nui and Berix, but something silly like a mountain wasn’t going to stop them. Mata Nui stuffed Berix into the barrel of the 40kMGA, aimed, and shot, sending Berix – now a blazing ball of energy – flying toward the mountain.

Berix and mountain collided in midair, creating a huge explosion that would have destroyed the whole planet had Mata Nui not grabbed it and redirected it back into space, sending the explosion off into the unknown depths of the universe, never to be heard from again.

That made Ackar jealous. He had been taken out earlier by a near-lethal blow from Destruction. He wondered if he was losing his edge.

I am getting old, Ackar thought as he sat down to contemplate, completely ignoring everything around him. I mean, I’m not as fast as Gresh or as hip and stylish as Berix. Nor am I the main character like Mata Nui is. Maybe I should just retire; no one needs an old man like me around anymore. I’m just deadweight. Only reason I’m around is ‘cause Mata Nui is my friend.

Ackar felt emo and, pulling out a pad of writing paper and a pen from nowhere, began writing emo poetry while his friends nearly got themselves killed. Here’s an example of what Ackar wrote:

I am useless

You are useless

Life is useless

The world is useless

The word useless is useless

Saying the word useless is useless is . . . useless.

Very creative, you see.

But as Ackar finished his 50th verse of emo poetry, he realized just how bad it was. He couldn’t write poetry, not even emo poetry.

But he could fight, he suddenly remembered. He’d defeated Strakk, Stronius, and millions or perhaps billions of Skrall and bone hunters, which wasn’t even counting his previous victories during the great war all of those years ago, such as toppling a continent on an enemy base.

What was he getting emo about? Of course he was useful! He wasn’t deadweight. He had contributed to the team as much as the others, perhaps even more so. He was hip with the cool dog. He wasn’t going to get emo, which he realized was probably Destruction’s intent. Destruction only sought to destroy Ackar’s self-confidence, but Ackar wasn’t fooled. No one could fool him.

So, getting up to his feet, Ackar yelled, “Ha!” and instantly healed all of his wounds. He felt as fresh as a newborn baby, but not nearly as fragile. He was ready to kick Eldritch Abomination butt, starting with Destruction.

Raising his sword, he shouted, “For Narnia and for ASLAN!”

Then he flew through the air like a missile. He moved so fast that he sliced off Destruction’s left arm, causing the entity from the Abyss to cry out in pain. As Ackar turned around, he saw Mata Nui aimed his 40kMGA and shoot Destruction straight in the face, sending the monster stumbling backwards. Then Berix – who had apparently survived his collision with the mountain – bent over behind Destruction, causing the Abyss beast to stumble over the Agori, despite being so tall this shouldn’t have even been possible.

Destruction’s fall shook the ground so hard that his demonic servants actually exploded, while Kiina and Gresh performed a thousand different gymnastic techniques in order to keep their footing. Indeed, it felt like the entire world was shaking apart, as gigantic volcanoes pierced the surface of the ground and spewed hot molten lava and ash into the air. More demons were spilling out of the volcanoes, except they were all on fire due to having slept inside volcanoes. Gresh and Kiina ran to meet the new reinforcements, while Mata Nui, Ackar, and Berix began a new assault on Destruction.

The trio of heroes leapt into the air at the exact same time and, aiming directly at Destruction’s chest, combined their legs into one sharp arrow-like head. Then they fell and struck the entity with so much force that he broke through the ground, causing him to fall back into the Abyss.

“Nooooo!” Destruction roared as he fell. “I cannot be defeated again! I cannot!”

Ackar, Mata Nui, and Berix would have joined him into the Abyss, but they jumped off of his chest and then jumped off of each other to reach the surface. Then they watched as Destruction disappeared from view, seemingly defeated for good now.

“That was easy,” said Berix as he, Mata Nui, and Ackar turned away, not even sweating. “I mean, he just fell back into the Abyss crying like a big, fat, ugly baby, which he is.”

“Wait a moment,” said Mata Nui, stopping. “I heard something.”

Ackar, Mata Nui, and Berix stopped, listening. At first, Ackar could hear nothing out of the ordinary, but soon he heard rumbling below and felt the ground beneath his feet start to shake. In fact, he saw huge cracks appear in the rock, like some big monster was trying to break free.

And then, the ground collapsed, causing Mata Nui, Ackar, and Berix to float in midair as they looked down and saw not just one Destruction, but two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . hundreds of them, all crawling out from the depths of the Abyss, eager to kill. Ackar had never imagined that the Abyss could carry so many entities, but he knew they were all about to suffer the same fate as the original Destruction.

Ackar, Mata Nui, and Berix leapt out of the air and landed on solid ground as the army of Destructions rose from the Abyss. Mata Nui loaded his gun, Ackar swung his sword, and Berix made his trademark double barrel guns explode into existence. To test them out, he aimed at one of the nearby volcanoes and shot it, blowing the mountain up and sending lava raining down, striking several of the Destructions and causing them to fall backwards into the Abyss.

“Do you think we can defeat all of those?” Ackar asked Mata Nui, his eyes never leaving the army.

Just then, lightning rained down from the heavens, striking several of the Destructions and obliterating them from existence. Startled, Ackar and Berix looked up and saw Zeus floating down on a chariot, two thunderbolts in his hands as his Greek toga flowed in the air all awesome like. Ackar was just glad he couldn’t see underneath Zeus’ toga.

“I have come to slay thee, monsters!” Zeus roared, speaking butchered Old English for some reason. “You are threats to Olympus! Ho ho!”

Since his chariot was going too slowly, Zeus performed a front flip off of it and landed on the ground, creating huge cracks in the earth where he landed. He then slammed his two lightning bolts together to form a sword made of out of electricity and charged the Destructions, tearing through them with a single stroke of his sword.

“Huh, I thought Zeus didn’t like mortals,” Ackar commented.

“Eh, me and him go way back,” said Mata Nui. “He’s okay with me. Anyway, let’s go kick those things back to whence they came!”

So the trio charged again, ready to defeat the Destructions once and for all.

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Then the Tuma raised his cannon and fired, while simultaneously unleashing three dozen bullets from each of his three remaining back-mounted guns. The cannon ball and bullets were all heading for Mata Nui. Any normal person would have given up any hope of salvation, but Mata Nui was no normal person. He had his 40kMGA and he knew how to use it.

Mata Nui raised his 40kMGA rifle and somehow caught all 36 bullets plus the cannon ball in his gun’s barrel. Then, activating its special ability, Mata Nui aimed his gun straight in the face of the now startled Tuma, smiling triumphantly all the while.

“Looks like you’re about to figure out what happens to those who defy the mighty Mata Nui!” Mata Nui shouted as he unleashed a huge energy blast from the 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle at the Tuma’s chest.

In all honesty, this is probably a less humiliating defeat than what he suffered in the movies.

“I have come to slay thee, monsters!” Zeus roared, speaking butchered Old English for some reason. “You are threats to Olympus! Ho ho!”

You are implying that things were "normal" up to this point. Clearly, you were not paying attention to the events of the last 14 chapters .

New chapter:

Chapter 16: And the Battle is over . . . Right?

Gresh got on his hands and spun around on his head, performing a tornado kick that annihilated several lava demons. Then he got up and punched a nearby demon in the face so hard the demon regressed several years until it was a baby demon again. It was technically still an adult, but the timeline couldn’t handle this contradiction, since it was kind of like dividing by zero. So the timeline imploded on itself, but no one paid attention to a silly little thing like that when there was still so much fighting to do.

Gresh looked around and saw Kiina head butt a demon into infinity. He was so jealous that Mata Nui had such an awesome girlfriend. He decided that, after this, he would ask Kiina if she knew any girls who were looking for a handsome guy who could speak incomprehensibly. Perhaps they would be as awesome as her.

A demon tried to sneak up on him, but Gresh, still watching Kiina, just casually knocked it aside without looking, sending it flying into a nearby volcano. The demon collided with the volcano, collapsing the volcano and probably causing what should have been a major natural disaster, but considering the planet itself seemed to be tearing itself apart a volcano collapsing wasn’t all that bad.

A demon’s hand burst from the ground and seized Gresh’s ankle. But Gresh wasn’t going to be pulled into the depths of the Abyss. Instead, he heaved his leg upward and pulled the surprised demon out of the earth. Then he got on his hands and performed another tornado kick sending the demon – now charged with the power of the storm – flying into a large army of demons that had just climbed from out of the depths of a volcano.

The flying demon collided with the army and exploded, annihilating yet another army that had appeared. Gresh figured that should have eliminated them all, but ten billion more demons materialized out of nowhere, causing him to sigh and begin his attacks anew.

-

Kiina seized two demons and slammed them together, causing them to explode. She then kicked that explosion at a group of nearby demons, who all ran in terror from the flying explosion. They couldn’t outrun it, however, and were soon consumed by the flames of the explosion (despite technically having fire immunity because they came from the volcanoes, but just shut up and read).

A demon came up behind her and seized her arms. This was a fatal mistake . . . for the demon, because Kiina jumped up, pressed her feet against the demon’s chest, and then pushed forward with all of her strength.

One would think a move like that would dislocate her shoulders or perhaps even rip her arms straight off. Instead, due to sheer awesomeness, the demon’s arms went flying off, its hands still gripping Kiina’s arms. Kiina landed in the middle of a large group of demons and, spinning around in a circle, destroyed them all with the last demon’s arms.

Then she shook off the severed limbs, disgusted.

“Gross,” said Kiina, shaking her head and wiping off her arms. “I mean, ugh, they were useful weapons, but I do not want any other man touching me but Mata Nui!”

Kiina had seen Mata Nui, Ackar, and Berix fighting off a horde of Destructions. Oddly enough, the Greek god Zeus was also helping them, smiting any enemies he saw from the endless army that rose from the Abyss. She wanted to go help Mata Nui, but since he seemed to have it under control she contented herself with slaying demons instead.

If only there were a way to stop them for good! Kiina thought as she hurled a sharp stone at a nearby demon, stabbing it in the chest and causing it to explode. They just keep on coming without end! No matter how many times Gresh or I hospitalize them, they just keep coming back!

She was so frustrated by not knowing how to stop them that she kicked out randomly, which ended the lives of at least two demons. Although Kiina could not know it, those two demons were a couple who had just gotten together despite their parents’ wishes. They had traveled thousands of miles to be together, but had only met up at that exact moment when Kiina destroyed them. It was a true tale of love and loyalty that would have made Shakespeare cry and would have put Stephanie Meyer to shame.

But since Kiina didn’t know that and because this is not a romance story, we won’t go into the detail of the painful sacrifices those two demons had to make to be with each other. We shall say nothing about their burning passion to become married and have demon babies and live long, happy lives that would inspire a romantic book series that everyone and their mother would read.

But Kiina, who did not know that, had just thwarted the only effort in history to show that two very different people can get together and be happy. The heartless fiend saw to it that the two lovers could not be together, not even for three seconds. For that, she will go down in demon history as the mistress of evil, one who sought to destroy true love. Her legacy shall be cursed forevermore and she will never rest in peace ever.

Oh, sorry for going off on a bit of a tangent. I know no one wants to listen to my ranting because no one ever does! No one ever wants to take ANYTHING I SAY SERIOUSLY! Why, if I knew how to speak French right now I’d-

TNTOS: Hey, what’re you doing writing my fanfics?

What?

TNTOS: Yeah, you. You’re just some crazy romantic who threw in that stupid and pointless demon romance subplot that I didn’t approve of.

But you weren’t typing here, so I thought-

TNTOS: What, you thought it would be okay to add to my stories without my permission? You think I am not currently seriously ticked off right now at the nerve you have at trying to make BIONICLE: The Legend Reloaded into some kind of serious romance story?

Well, I-

TNTOS: Get out of here before I kill hospitalize you in this story.

Yes, sir.

TNTOS: Well, now that she’s gone, time to get back to the story. Sorry for the pointless tangent, readers, but Amy just does that a lot and I have to keep her busy with romance novels and stuff or else she tries to throw bad romance subplots into my stories, like she tried to do right now, in fact. Now time to go back to mindless action, which is what this comedy is all about.

-

One of Zeus’ thunderbolts zipped past Mata Nui, but he grabbed it, stuffed it into his 40kMGA, and shot the attack at one of the Destructions. The Destruction exploded and the explosion imploded and the implosion exploded . . . if that makes any sense, which it doesn’t but whatever. It’s either that or the demon romance subplot and I think I know what we all really want.

Mata Nui whirled around and punched a Destruction in the face, sending it flying in Ackar’s direction. Ackar got into a batter position and hit the Destruction with all of his might, sending it flying away like a morbid baseball of hospitalization. It broke through the sky and plummeted into some kind of bizarre alternate universe that I do not care enough to go into detail about.

Then Berix leapt off of air, performed three hundred summersaults, and landed amidst the Destructions. He spun around, killing three with every bullet. He then unleashed a wave of energy from his body, which sent the Destructions flying.

Zeus took it over from here. As the Destructions drew closer to the clouds, Zeus rained thunderbolts upon them, totally annihilating the entities from the Abyss. The ashes of Destructions rained down upon them, but it looked like for now that there were no more, for there were no more monsters rising from the Abyss anymore.

And then – believe it or not – a hand as big as a building rose from the Abyss. Then, without warning, a gigantic form burst through the ground. It radiated so much heat and energy that it totally disintegrated all of the demonic servants of the Destruction, causing Gresh and Kiina to jump backwards to avoid being destroyed themselves.

The new entity that had risen from the Abyss was unlike anything that had ever walked Bara Magna’s surface. Its head resembled a dragon, but it had sleek black, skeletal skin, with lights blaring from its eye sockets. A t-shirt that read “World’s Best Eldritch Abomination” covered its large hairy, ape-like chest with bulging muscles. It had no wings or tail, but its arms and legs resembled cannons fused with swords, if that were possible.

“What in the name of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and every other deceased celebrity out there is that?” Mata Nui gasped.

“I am the spirit of the Abyss,” the monster said. Its voice was so loud that they could only hear it in their minds. “For years I was only capable of affecting the world with a portion of my power. But now, I am free to roam the universe as I did 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.3 years ago!”

Mata Nui glanced over his shoulder and saw that Zeus – the king of the gods, supposedly one of the most powerful immortal beings of all time – was nowhere to be seen. Ackar and Berix were looking for him, too, but the god was gone.

“Okay, so we don’t have a cowardly god on our side anymore,” Mata Nui grumbled. “But we’re still awesome enough to take you on! Let’s go, guys!”

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Abyss raised its huge, bizarre hands and unleashed a wave of hospitalization on our four heroes and one heroine. Normally, this would be enough to hospitalize any normal person, but Mata Nui, Gresh, Ackar, Berix, and Kiina simply aimed their guns and blew the wave of hospitalization away.

Then Mata Nui said to the others, “Ackar, Gresh, take the right. Kiina, Berix, the left. I’ll take him head on!”

The others separated as he had commanded. Mata Nui charged, firing off round after round of rifle ammo. As he ran, he bent over and stuffed whatever he could find into his 40kMGA; rocks, discarded weapons, pieces of armor, even a squirrel as he shot those things at the Abyss spirit at 1000 times their usual strength.

Meanwhile, Ackar and Gresh had reached Abyss’ right arm and were now scaling it, shooting and stabbing wherever they happen to be standing. However, they were little more than mosquitoes to Abyss, who with one shrug sent the two heroes flying. Ackar and Gresh slammed into the ground so hard that the whole ground shook, or what was left of the ground, anyway.

But the two instantly got up and charged Abyss again, this time with even more ferocity than before.

Berix and Kiina, meanwhile, were running around Abyss’ legs, stabbing, poking, and even tickling wherever they went. They had a vague notion to perhaps trip him up, but because Abyss’ legs still stood about halfway into the pit from which he had rose the task seemed impossible. Then again, this whole comedy is about going beyond the impossible, so they had some hope.

Mata Nui then launched himself into the air until he reached Abyss’ face, which was about three hundred feet from the ground. Mata Nui, literally glowing with rage, seized the power of nothingness itself and stuffed it into the 40kMGA.

Then, after spinning around in the air, he aimed the gun point blank at Abyss’ face.

“I think this is going to hurt,” said Mata Nui before he pulled the trigger of the shaking gun, which was almost incapable of holding such awesomeness in it.

The resulting explosion would have probably destroyed the entire universe had Mata Nui, Ackar, Gresh, Kiina, and Berix not held it back. They forced all of their energies on Abyss’ form, keeping the explosion from going anywhere else. The Abyss merely stood still, until finally the explosion passed . . . and he still stood, totally unharmed from that devastating attack.

“Fools!” Abyss roared, slashing at them with his claws. “I am the spirit of the Abyss! No one can defeat me!”

Our heroes were sent sprawling by his attacks until they all landed in a heap. Suddenly they were weak. Mata Nui could feel his energy being drained from him at an alarming rate and he instantly knew Abyss was responsible for the energy drain. Judging by the expressions on the others’ faces, Abyss was draining their power, too.

“As you can no doubt feel, I am draining all of your power!” Abyss roared, beating its chest with its claws. “Eventually, you will all be nothing more than withered husks and I shall reign once more!”

Is this the end? Mata Nui wondered as his yellow armor slowly began fading to gray. Did I come all this way, fight all of these fights, just to die at the hands of some ancient entity? Did I lead my friends to their hospitalization by leading them on this insane quest?

Looking at them all, Mata Nui said, in a weak voice, “I am sorry, my friends. I should have known we would have ended up getting hospitalized by a t-shirt-wearing Eldritch Abomination as old as the universe itself. It’s my fault for not realizing the kind of danger we got ourselves in.”

“Um, Mata Nui?” said Kiina. “I don’t think any of us could have seen this coming, to be honest.”

“But don’t worry,” Berix added, patting Mata Nui reassuringly on the shoulder, “we’ll still blame you when we get hospitalized. At least I know I will, anyway.”

“At least we gave this guy a good butt kicking before we left,” said Ackar, his armor turning from red to grayish. “I believe I can finally rest in peace.”

“But Iba can’t!” said Gresh anxiously. His armor, too, was nearly gray now. “Iba still want toba become President of the United States and geba married and haba a wife and twoba children!”

“Eh, you can’t have everything you want in life,” said Ackar, shrugging. “I wanted to become a pretty ballerina and solve world hunger, but I only ended up becoming the awesome mentor of the main character. See what I mean?”

“Oh,” said Gresh. “Well, Iba suppose I can’t complainba, then.”

So the five heroes stared defiantly in the face of the Abyss as their power was slowly seeped away. Mata Nui, Ackar, Gresh, and Berix had been through a lot together, from the battle at Sandray canyon to the assault on Roxtus. Even Kiina had done so much with them that they almost thought of her as a part of the crew now, too (almost). They bravely faced their hospitalization, which impressed even the entity that was about to hospitalized them, for in all of his 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.3 years of existence he had never seen any group of beings so bravely accept their fate.

Right when Mata Nui’s armor was nearly completely gray, an unexpected thing happened: A huge rock fell from the sky and crashed into the Abyss. Startled, Abyss nearly fell over and his energy drain power broke, causing power to fill the forms of Mata Nui, Ackar, Gresh, Berix, and Kiina again.

“It’s not just Zeus, but . . .” Ackar trailed off, incapable of believing what he saw.

It was true that Zeus – toga and everything – was floating above them in his chariot. But that wasn’t what had caught their attention. What they saw was the ultra-powerful, planet-sized entity that stood behind Zeus, outside of Bara Magna’s atmosphere. The being was so huge that he looked like a giant mural slapped against the sky, rather than a real being.

“Yes, young heroes, I have,” Super Planet answered, his voice so loud that it rocked the foundations of the universe (literally). “Zeus here knew he could not defeat the Abyss by himself, so he left and found me.”

“So you’ll defeat the Abyss for us?” Mata Nui called.

“No,” said Super Planet, shaking his head. “Instead, I shall grant you five the power necessary to slay the greatest threat to the universe since Justin Bieber.” (Author’s note: Ha, Justin Bieber joke. It’s funny. Laugh at it.)

Immediately, our heroes’ weapons started glowing so brightly even Abyss had to cover his eyes to avoid being blinded permanently.

“But to accomplish it, you will need to access the power of unity,” Super Planet explained. “Next to the power of love, the power of unity is the most powerfully powerful force in the universe. Very, very few things can withstand it . . . and Abyss, unfortunately for him, is not one of those things.”

Knowing what to do, Mata Nui aimed his 40kMGA, Ackar his sword, Gresh his shield, Berix his double barrel guns, and Kiina her stolen Skrall rifle at Abyss. Energy – a force stronger than anything Mata Nui or anyone else present had ever experienced before – surged through their weapons. It felt like the portion of reality that the weapons were in was warped, breaking, melting, incapable of handling so much awesomeness in one area like that.

Mata Nui looked to Ackar, then to Gresh, then Berix, and finally to Kiina. Then he said, as loudly as he could, “For unity!”

What happened next, no one was ever quite sure about afterwards. As soon as the five heroes unleashed their combined energy, we can only say that the universe finally snapped. The combined energy blasts – the power of unity itself – struck Abyss so hard that he flew outside of the universe into the endless blackness of reality. He was spinning wildly out of control as unity tore him apart until he crashed into nothing.

Abyss could only scream as the power ate through his form, totally annihilating not only his physical body but his spirit as well. In fact, due to the fact that he had been flying so fast, time finally caught up with him and he smashed through nothingness and exploded and imploded at the exact same time, totally disappearing forever. Even the dust particles left over from the eximplosion (for want of a better term) exploded, completely evaporated from existence.

And so, the universe itself was safe for the time being, thanks to the powers of five heroes and an interplanetary entity and a god. Or was it?

“Yeah, it is,” said Mata Nui, nodding. “Bye, bye.”

Without further ado the screen went black.

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

And now, for what I like to call Part 2: The Ninjas Attack (AKA The Unnecessary Other Half of the Story):

Chapter 18: What Happens Next?

“Thanks for the help, Super Planet,” said Mata Nui, looking up at the gigantic entity’s face. “But of course, we could have defeated the Abyss by ourselves.”

Super Planet laughed heartily, which caused a nearby planet to explode. “You are mightily welcome, my friends. If it had not been for Ackar, why, I would not even exist! It was only fair that I help you guys out. You’re the best.”

“Aw, we’re not that awesome,” said Berix. “Well, okay, we are, but you were awesome, too, Super Planet.”

“Will you stay with us?” Ackar shouted. “We could use your help!”

“No, my tiny mortal friends,” said Super Planet, shaking his head, extinguishing a few hundred stars as he did so. “I cannot stay with you. My journey is never-ending. I must continue my quest to explore my kingdom for as long as I live. For only I have the power to defeat whatever universal evils may lurk in the darkest, deepest, coldest corners of this universe and it is up to me to stop them before they become too big to handle.”

“Couldn’t yuba take usba with yuba?” asked Gresh, holding his hand over his eyes to protect them from Super Planet’s supreme glory.

“No, it would be too dangerous,” said Super Planet. “Your destiny is here, on this little planet. Besides, I doubt any other world would be able to contain your combined awesomeness without exploding and destroying several nearby planets anyway.”

“He has a point,” Mata Nui said.

“Now, good bye, my friends,” said Super Planet. “I will now go off on my never-ending quest and someday somewhere I’ll finally see the light I have been searching for everywhere.”

“Will we ever see you again?” Kiina asked.

“Perhaps someday,” said Super Planet solemnly. “If you believe in Wonderland, that is.”

Then he stood up inside the universe, turned around, and flew off into the distance. As Super Planet flew, a certain song began to play, fitting this particular moment quite well:

So come aboard and bring along

All your hopes and dreams!

Together we will find everything

That we’re looking for!

There’s always room for you

If you want to be my friend

We are we are on the cruise

We are!*

-

Mata Nui, with Kiina sitting behind him, rode at the head of the procession. Our heroes were finally heading home, ready to begin living life normally again. But Ackar kept glancing back toward the sky, wondering if he would ever see Super Planet again.

Berix, on the other hand, had already forgotten about Super Planet and was busily texting all his friends on his iPhone, which he had pulled out of that handy dandy plot hole that kept following him around.

“Berix, whaba are yuba doing?” asked Gresh as they rode.

“I’m texting all of my friends, of course,” Berix replied matter of factly. “Didn’t you hear what the narrator said, Gresh?”

“But yuba don’t haba any friends,” said Gresh.

“Oh, yes I do,” said Berix, rolling his eyes. “I have three, in fact.”

Gresh tilted his head. “Meba, Ackar, andba Mata Nui?”

“Nope,” said Berix, shaking his head. “My friends are me, myself, and I.”

“Soba you haba been texting yubaself?” asked Gresh, puzzled.

“No,” said Berix, as though it were the most stupid thing he had ever heard. “I am texting me, myself, and I, not yourself, silly.”

“Bah, English hurts my brainba,” said Gresh, grabbing his head with one hand.

At the head of the party, Mata Nui was recounting all of their adventures to Kiina, who had fallen asleep and wasn’t listening, although Mata Nui didn’t know that.

“And then, I was all like, ‘Okay, Tornadias, time to kick your windy butt back to Olympus,’” Mata Nui went on excitedly. “And Tornadias was all like ‘You can’t hurt me ‘cause I’m the personification of the storm!’ And then I was like, ‘Personification of the storm this!’”

He lifted his rifle and shot a nearby cloud, causing it to explode.

The sound woke Kiina, who shook her head and said, “What was that?”

“And then Zeus was like, ‘Dude, I am sick of you mortals! Like, die!’” Mata Nui continued without interruption. “He like threw a thunderbolt at me like this.”

Mata Nui materialized a thunderbolt in his hands and hurled it at a nearby mountain, obliterating the gigantic rock easily.

“Oh, I didn’t look like that, did I?” Zeus asked sheepishly as he floated in his chariot nearby.

“Cool,” said Kiina. Then she noticed Zeus and asked him, “Hey, don’t you like, have to rule Olympus or something like that?”

“I am taking a well-deserved vacation from Olympus, my good maiden,” Zeus replied. “I left Ares in charge while I am away.”

“Is that why Mount Olympus is on fire?” asked Kiina, pointing up at the clouds.

“What?” said Zeus, looking up in the direction that she was pointing. “What doest thou mean, ‘on fire?’”

Her meaning became clear pretty quick: All of Mount Olympus appeared to be burning to the ground.

“I knew I shouldn’t have left Ares in charge while I was away!” Zeus sighed, as though this were typical behavior of the god of war. “I suspect the gods have broken out in civil war! Looks like I’ll have to cut my vacation short! Good bye, my mortal friends!”

Zeus quickly ascended into the sky toward Olympus as thunderbolts appeared in his hands. How Zeus planned to put out a fire with lightning, Kiina did not know.

“Mata Nui, stop!” Kiina shouted, pointing over his shoulder. “Someone is lying on the road!”

“What?” Mata Nui said as he looked around.

She was right. Lying on the road, not too far ahead of them, was a figure clad in blue and gold armor. He looked like he had been beaten pretty badly, but Mata Nui didn’t really care.

“We don’t have to stop, do we?” he asked Kiina. “I mean, it’s not like he’s our problem, right?”

Kiina just glared at him.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Mata Nui growled as he brought his sand stalker to a stop in front of the being. “I should have let the Tuma kill you.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Berix, Gresh, and Ackar stopped, too. Berix leapt from his mount and ran over to the being. He flipped the figure over onto his back and yelled, “Breathe, darn it!” before smashing his fists into the figure’s stomach with all of his might.

Immediately, the figure’s eyes flew open and he inhaled deeply before exhaling. Mata Nui, Kiina, Gresh, and Ackar got off of their mounts and ran over to the figure, who was now sitting up, rubbing his stomach as he glared at Berix.

“You did not have to hit me so hard,” the figure snapped at him.

“But that’s how they do it on TV,” Berix reminded him. “And it always works.”

“Well, this isn’t TV, but whatever,” the figure sighed. He looked at the others and asked, “Who are you guys?” He trembled in fear as he beheld their weapons. “You’re not some boy band, are you?”

“No, we have a girl on our team,” said Ackar, pointing at Kiina. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Oh, good,” the figure said in relief. “I was worried there for a second . . .”

The figure nodded. “In a way. You see, I was traveling this road here when boy band ninjas attacked and robbed me. They said they were working for the Grand Di-Shogun and stole my credit cards, cell phone, and wallet. I don’t know where they went and now I am in bad condition.”

“I see,” said Mata Nui. “And what is your name?”

“Tarix,” said the figure. “I fought in the fight club in Tesara. I was heading home when the ninjas attacked.”

“My name is Mata Nui, but I am sorry that we cannot be of help,” said Mata Nui, shaking his head as he helped Tarix to his feet. “We have just finished the main plot of this comedy and are planning to head home now.”

“But the ninjas also kidnapped my father,” said Tarix. “Old Man Raanu, elder of Vulcanus. He was traveling with me and I think they kidnapped him. I don’t know why, but they did.”

Everything changed then. Mata Nui looked more serious now as he said, “Your father, a leading politician, was kidnapped by ninjas?”

“Yes,” said Tarix, nodding. “Are you bad boys bad enough to save the elder from ninjas?”

“Of course we are,” said Mata Nui arrogantly. He gestured to the others and said, “All in favor of stretching out this comedy as much as possible?”

“I!” they all said in unison.

“Then let’s track down those ninjas and save the President, er, I mean elder,” said Mata Nui as he leapt back onto his sand stalker, Kiina not far behind. “If we’re going to make this a true action flick then it was inevitable we would fight ninjas eventually. Let’s go.”

*Lyrics taken from English version of We Are, the first One Piece opening theme.

-TNTOS-

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

You are implying that things were "normal" up to this point. Clearly, you were not paying attention to the events of the last 14 chapters

Well...there's weird...and then there's really weird...we were at weird before.

ALSO YOU POST CHAPTERS REALLY FAST.

Looking at them all, Mata Nui said, in a weak voice, “I am sorry, my friends. I should have known we would have ended up getting hospitalized by a t-shirt-wearing Eldritch Abomination as old as the universe itself. It’s my fault for not realizing the kind of danger we got ourselves in.”

“Um, Mata Nui?” said Kiina. “I don’t think any of us could have seen this coming, to be honest.”

I think Mata Nui's beating himself up a bit too much over this one here.

A demon tried to sneak up on him, but Gresh, still watching Kiina, just casually knocked it aside without looking, sending it flying into a nearby volcano. The demon collided with the volcano, collapsing the volcano and probably causing what should have been a major natural disaster, but considering the planet itself seemed to be tearing itself apart a volcano collapsing wasn’t all that bad.

This is fine in the story, but I just felt like it was worth highlighting to show off how weird it sounded when taken out of context.

The part at the end of the last chapter where the fourth wall died numerous deaths and they went to go after ninjas was great as well.

Chapter 19: Why Yes, We CAN Stretch out This Comedy until You Get Tired of it

Our crew of heroes set out west, supposedly where the ninjas were hiding out. None of them really knew where the ninjas were, but since Google said that the Everlasting Ninjas lived in the west they decided that that was their best chance of finding them.

‘West,’ of course, was a very vague, general direction. They traveled west for several hours, occasionally stopping to find signs of ninja activity in the area. They’d see things like discarded shruikens, bits of ninja camouflage clothes, and Naruto wall scrolls, among other things. Clearly, the ninjas had been through here. They kept their guard up despite there being no visible ninjas in the area.

Ninjas are the masters of ambush and disguise, Mata Nui thought as they rode. They can look like anything. Indeed, I’d say it is highly likely that there is a ninja following us right now, trying to decide if we are threats to his clan.

Mata Nui flipped out a pistol and shot a nearby tree. The ‘tree’ groaned and fell over, revealing it to actually be a ninja painted completely brown with a thick green bush mounted on top of his head.

“Darn ninjas,” said Mata Nui, glowering at the dead ninja as they passed. “They’re everywhere.”

“Yeah,” said Ackar, nodding. He threw his sword at a boulder and stabbed a particularly fat ninja which was painted the colors of a rock. “They’re just annoying, aren’t they?”

“I agree,” said Berix as he shot two ninja clouds out of the sky with his double barrel guns. “I mean, after the Abyss, do they honestly think they can stop us?”

“Apparently, yesba,” said Gresh as he punched the air, which turned out to be a ninja in disguise, which fell over and died due to the strength Gresh had put in his punch. “They also beba stupiba, apparently.”

“But we gotta save Raanu,” said Mata Nui determinedly. “Even if we have to fight an army of ninjas – which I figure we will, at some point or another – we will do it.”

They stopped before a large forest. The trees look withered and old and generally harmless, but Mata Nui was not fooled. He motioned for the others to get their weapons ready and then whispered, “On the count of three. One . . . two . . . three!”

They fired at the forest at the exact same time. All of the trees immediately transformed into black-clad ninjas, most of which fell from the bullets. However, several billion of them still lived and they descended on Mata Nui and the gang with the force of a hurricane.

Mata Nui leapt off of his sand stalker and landed in the midst of a group of ninjas. He spun around, firing round after round after round after round of rifle ammunition as he did so. Thousands of ninjas fell with every shot.

Kiina, meanwhile, was still riding their mount, shooting at any ninja that came close. One ninja landed on the sand stalker, but a shot to the face sent it falling off into the crowd of ninjas that were following Kiina.

Ackar had abandoned his sand stalker and was going around slicing and slashing up as many ninjas as he could reach. He seized a ninja, let it on fire, and then hurled it at a million others, causing them to blow up as the fiery ninja collided with the group.

Gresh ducked to avoid a poisoned dagger and then clapped his hands so hard he created a sonic boom that annihilated half of the legion he was facing. Then he performed 3000 back flips in midair before landing softly on the ground and running headlong into the fray.

Berix was just going crazy, running up to ninjas and kicking or shooting their shins. He was so fast and so deadly that a few ninjas broke off from the group and tried to run away, but they never could escape Berix. What he did to them served as an example to the others, who all tried to surrender in order to survive. But since Berix doesn’t believe in mercy, none of them lived.

Eventually, the army of ninjas was completely shrunken from its previous size. Only a few survivors escaped; the rest lay dead in piles that reached into the sky. Mata Nui, Ackar, Gresh, Berix, and Kiina spun their weapons in their hands and then placed them back in their holsters.

“So now that that is over with,” said Mata Nui as he got back on his sand stalker. “Let’s go find Raanu again, shall we?”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:10 PM.

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

He was right. Mount Ninja appeared to be a lush, green paradise. Mountain goats were happily munching on fresh grass, trees and flowers that bloomed everywhere, and the whole place gave off a too-good-to-be-true-feeling. The sun was literally smiling down on the place, while a herd of sheep skipped across the rocky green surface like they were having the time of their lives.

Mata Nui couldn’t argue against Berix’s observation of the place. It looked happy and bright and he could not see a ninja in sight. Even the trees looked pretty much like normal trees; no oddly shaped limbs or anything.

Yet he still felt apprehensive as he led the others into the mountain. You don’t call a dog a dachshund unless it actually is, so Mata Nui figured there must be more to this place than meets the eye, even if there were no signs to indicate this (besides the ‘Mount Ninja’ sign, that is).

“Aw, look at the little baby goat!” Kiina said, pointing at a nearby family of goats that were eating grass. “It’s so cute!”

“And kawaii!” Berix added.

“Uh, ‘kawaii’ means ‘cute’ in Japanese, Berix,” said Kiina. “You’re basically just repeating what I said.”

“No, there’s a difference between ‘kawaii’ and ‘cute,’” said Berix, shaking his head. “’Cute’ means ‘cute,’ while ‘kawaii’ means ‘kawaii.’ Get what I’m saying?”

“No, I don’t,” said Kiina, shaking her head.

Berix sighed exasperatedly. “Okay. Let’s say that you and I see a four-legged animal. You call it a dog; I call it a canine.”

“So we’re both right, then?” asked Kiina as they rode past the goat family. Mata Nui kept his eyes on them; none of the goats did anything to indicate they were nothing more than goats. “You admit that cute and kawaii mean the same thing?”

“I’m not finished yet,” Berix said, glaring at her. “Anyway, you call it a dog and I call it a canine. We then argue about whether it is a dog or a canine. I lose my temper, pull out my gun and shoot your face.”

“I don’t see what point that proves,” said Kiina, tilting her head to the side. “Seriously, I don’t.”

“Oh, never mind,” Berix sighed, shaking his head like she was a simple-minded fool. “Your mind isn’t mature enough to understand.”

“Oh, it’s not?” said Kiina indignantly. “Well, sorry I asked!”

“Quit it, both of you,” Ackar snapped. “I sense danger.”

“Aren’t we usually the guys who argue about these kinds of things?” Berix asked Ackar. “Why am I arguing with Kiina about the difference between ‘cute’ and ‘kawaii’ when you’re right here?”

“Because I really could honestly care less,” Ackar replied. “Anyway, like I said before, I sense danger.”

“I, too, sense danger,” said Mata Nui, his hand never leaving his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle. “But it is difficult to say why. Everything just seems so peaceful. There is almost literally no reason for me to-“

Suddenly, a nearby goat stood on its back hooves and threw three hundred ninja throwing stars at our heroes. Gresh leapt off of his sand stalker and deflected all of the shruikens with his shield. Then he spun around in a complete circle and shot the goat dead. The goat gave a strangely human yelp and fell to the ground, dead (just wanted to make sure you knew he was dead).

“Whatever Gresh said, I agree,” said Ackar as he quickly drew his sword. “Everyone, draw your weapons. I think they realize we know who they are.”

That was a bit of an understatement, for all of the goats and sheep immediately stood straight and ripped off their fur coats to reveal black ninja coats on. They all drew nun-chucks, poisoned daggers, shruikens, and various other weapons the average ninja would was expected to be carrying. By the time they finished drawing all of their weapons, Mata Nui counted three trillion nun-chucks, forty googolplex poisoned daggers, and literally countless shruikens in the hands of the goat and sheep ninjas. Logically that shouldn’t have been possible; but if this comedy had bothered to follow logic from the beginning, it wouldn’t exist, so he chose not to question the unrealistic amount of weapons. He only wondered if he could beat them.

Nearby, Berix had pulled out a pad of paper and was drawing something. Sighing, Ackar asked, “Berix, what are you doing?”

He held up the paper and showed a surprisingly-realistic drawing of his double barrel guns. In fact, it was so realistic that half of the ninja sheep and goats were blown back by its detailed design. Several were killed, but most merely suffered severe wounds from the drawing.

“That’s not what I- Never mind,” Ackar sighed. “Look, just get out your weapon. We’re going to kick some sheep and goat butt.”

-

As was their usual custom, our five heroes split off to take down the ninjas more easily. Mata Nui was taking on a large group comprised mostly of deadly-looking sheep ninjas, twirling their nun-chucks and knives like they meant business.

“I’ve heard of wolves in sheep clothing, but never of ninjas in sheep clothing!” Mata Nui said as he ducked to avoid a nun-chuck. “That brings up the question: What would win in a fight, wolves or ninjas?”

Another sheep charged him, but he merely sidestepped it and then shot it dead with his rifle at point blank range. Then he picked up a rock, threw it straight up into the air, and then smacked it with his rifle baseball-style as it fell. The rock flew straight and true, striking a sheep in the chest so hard he exploded into candy and chocolate.

“It is difficult to say which would win,” Mata Nui continued, leaping over a sheep that was carrying a baseball bat with a rusty nail stuck through it. “On one hand, ninjas have the ability to conceal themselves and use practically anything as a weapon. But on the other hand . . .”

A ninja teleported behind Mata Nui, but he expected that and slew the ninja with one blow from his gun.

“They’re terribly predictable after you watch a few action movies,” Mata Nui finished. “Now wolves, they’re trickier. They have teeth, a vicious appetite for flesh, and always roam in packs. They can also transform people into werewolves sometimes, depending on their abilities.”

Mata Nui ran and performed three million summersaults in midair before landing and taking out several sheep ninjas with ease.

“I’d say ninjas have the advantage of being smarter than wolves, but I wouldn’t count a wolf out in a fight,” Mata Nui concluded. He looked around, surprised to see that the remaining sheep ninjas were now watching him apprehensively. “What are they so scared of? I haven’t even done anything and they’re already afraid! Wolves would definitely win if they were up against you guys! You’re pathetic, you know that?”

The sheep ninjas looked ashamed of themselves. Except for one, who was so enraged at Mata Nui’s hurtful words that it charged at him, pulling out two cleavers from out of nowhere as it did so.

Mata Nui deflected the cleavers with his gun and then sent the sheep ninja flying with a powerful kick to the abdomen. “Like I said, you wouldn’t stand a chance against the wolves.”

-

Berix had thought of a new battle tactic: He would attached his guns to his shoulders (which was possible, since he was a LEGO figure after all), curl into a ball, and start rolling while shooting his guns in whatever direction he happened to be rolling in. A bit unorthodox, perhaps, but he had so far taken down a million goat ninjas this way, not to mention several thousand sheep ninjas that hadn’t been wise enough to get out of his way.

He rolled to his feet, pulled off his guns, and began firing every which way. The rolling had hurt his back, so he decided he would go back to his old-fashioned standing. He liked it better anyway, since his aim was a lot more accurate this way.

“Who wants some? WHO WANTS SOME?” Berix yelled, so loudly the question marks in his sentences went flying out of his mouth and smacked a ninja in the face.

“I would like some,” said a nearby sheep ninja, holding out his hands. “Please give me some, good sir.”

“Here you go!” Berix shouted, turning on that goat and shooting ten centimeters’ worth of bullets at him.

Another arrogant sheep ninja snuck up on him, but Berix was ready. He turned around and jumped onto the ninja. He then kicked him in the face with both feet, spun around in midair, and then shot the ninja with enough strength that the ninja was sent flying into another group. That group of ninjas was sent flying into yet a larger group, which was sent flying into an even bigger group, until finally it collided with the main force and exploded in billions of pieces.

“Eat that!” said Berix as he did a little jig. “It’s my specialty, Berix Salsa on a Stick!”

With that Berix continued to dance happily, oblivious to the rest of the fighting going on around him.

-

Ackar was sword-fighting three ninjas at once. Ninja #1 sliced at him, which he dodged, putting him in the path of Ninja #2, whom he deflected. Ninja #3 tried to get him, but he grabbed Ninja #3’s sword and twisted it, also twisting Ninja #3 at the exact same time.

Then he pushed Ninja #2 back and kicked him. He then jumped up to avoid a blow from Ninja #1 and actually landed on the ninja’s sword. He ran up it and then delivered a devastating kick to Ninja #1’s jaw, sending the ninja spinning up out of control as Ackar performed a back flip and landed on his feet.

Ninja #3 was back, however, and tried to stab Ackar with at least eight poisoned bloody daggers. Ackar caught the daggers with his blade, however, and knocked them away. He punched Ninja #3 in the gut with enough force to punch straight through him and punch out the ninja that had been standing behind Ninja #3. The force of the punch was so powerful that the hereby named Ninja #4 was sent flying into another group of ninjas, blowing Ninja numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 14, 15, and 16 into oblivion.

“Didn’t mean to do that,” said Ackar as he smashed Ninja #2’s skull in without thinking about it. “But what works, works.”

Ninja #1 ran up the side of a tree and jumped off of it, flying at such fast speeds that had Ackar not moved out of the way, he would have been skewered.

As Ninja #1 flew by, however, Ackar grabbed him and then jumped onto the sheep ninja. He flew on the ninja, slicing down any other ninjas that happened to get in his way. Then he grabbed the head of the sheep ninja which he was flying on and pulled upward, sending them both flying up.

But as they flew, Ackar jumped off, pulled a rifle out of nowhere, and fired at Ninja #1. The sheep ninja exploded into a shower of wool and ninja clothing as Ackar landed sharply on his feet and threw the rifle away as he muttered, “Such a barbaric weapon.

”Then he looked around and realized there were no more sheep or goats. “Eh, such is life,” he said, shrugging as he sat down to rest for a bit. “Try to take on an old man and you get yourself killed. Such is life.”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:15 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Chapter 21: I Wanted to Stretch this Fight as Long as Possible so I Decided to Continue it into the Next Chapter

Gresh recognized that he was in a position where he could only do two of three things:

1) Kick butt, or:

2) Kick some more butt

The third option was ‘run away and hide,’ but since Gresh wasn’t wimpy he wasn’t going to run and hide. Just because he was surrounded by a billion sheep and goat ninjas didn’t mean he had to be a cowardly coward. All it meant was that he had to be more awesome.

A thousand ninjas jumped and hurled twice as many daggers at Gresh. He raised his shield and deflected all of the blades without much effort.

But before he could do anything else, a voice shouted, “Wait!”

“Waiba? Waiba for whaba?” asked Gresh, looking around.

A heavily armored, gigantic goat-sheep ninja hybrid stepped from out of the crowd. He was so huge Gresh had no idea how he had not seen him before. In fact, each of the weird ninja’s biceps appeared larger than whole planets. His legs appeared strong enough to smash universes into oblivion.

“Do you know who I am, green one?” the goat-sheep asked.

“Noba I don’t,” said Gresh, shaking his head.

“My name is Goeep,” he replied. “I am the king of goats and sheep. I have allied with the ninjas because they have proven themselves valuable allies. However, I feel the need to challenge you to a fight, for you and your friends appear to be even stronger than the ninjas.”

“Thab isba obvious,” said Gresh, rolling his eyes.

“I will offer to you a terms of peace,” said Goeep. “My sheep and goats will allow you to pass unharmed through this mountain if – and only if – you defeat me in battle.”

“Why?”

“Because I do not wish to see my people suffer any longer at your hands,” replied King Goeep. “It would be better if we were allies then enemies.”

Goeep immediately charged and tried to strike Gresh with his word. Gresh blocked it with his shield, but was forced back by the force of the blow. Gresh performed a back flip to avoid being sliced and diced into a million pieces. Then he lashed out with a devastating kick capable of crushing mountains, which Goeep deflected with his goat horns that had sprung out of his head.

“Good show, green one, but not good enough!” Goeep yelled as he launched Gresh high into the air and jumped up after Gresh.

The two began fighting in midair. They moved so fast that to the sheep and goat ninjas below they appeared to be nothing more than flashes of light clashing together. It was impossible for anyone to keep track of the fight. Even I, the narrator, was incapable of making out much more than a few flashes of green and black fighting in the air.

Something must have happened, however, for the next moment Goeep went crashing into the ground so hard that he sent up clumps of dirt and rock into the air that Gresh landed on and then jumped off of. Gresh performed three trillion summersaults in midair in three seconds and landed hard on Goeep, sending the king of goats and sheep crashing into the dirt even deeper.

“Please stop!” Goeep begged as Gresh pinned him down. “I beg of you! I give! You are the winner! Please spare my life!”

“I am an honorable warrior,” Goeep replied. “I would never go back on my word.”

“But you promised to pay me back those five dollars I lent you and you never did!” a random sheep ninja cried out. “That’s not honorable!”

“Yes, but I will keep my promises toward these warriors,” said Goeep gently. “They have proven themselves stronger than the ninjas.”

“I still want my five dollars,” the ninja muttered.

Goeep turned toward Gresh and said, “Will you call off your friends?”

“Sureba,” said Gresh. Before he left, he added to Goeep, “Buba if yuba doba anything suspicious, I willba kill yuba. Agreeba?”

“Yes,” said Goeep. “I agreeba.”

Then, with a nod, Gresh was off, running in a random direction to find whichever of his friends happened to be closest.

-

Kiina had not heard of the new peace treaty Gresh had made with Goeep. Instead, she was still kicking goat and sheep butt, using a sword she’d stolen off of a sheep. She was hacking and slashing her way through hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of perhaps trillions of sheep and goat ninjas, incapable of listening to reason or logic in her current state of mind.

“Die, sheepies!” Kiina yelled as she beheaded a long row of sheep. “Die, goaties!”

She was so fierce that many ninjas were now trying to retreat, but no one was capable of escaping Kiina’s wrath. Exactly why she was so powerful was a mystery, but it is something we will never touch upon ever. This isn’t a well-written story, you know.

She brought an upward slash that cut the air. Literally; she cut the air in half, causing part of it to fall on a group of unlucky ninjas. She then kicked another part of the air away, which hit a ninja and sent him flying. Then she spun around in a circle and unleashed her fury upon anyone who was nearby.

In fact, she was going so fast and so furiously that she nearly beheaded Mata Nui, who caught her sword with his gun and shouted, “Kiina! It’s me!”

“What?” Kiina said in surprise. “How’d you get here so fast, Mata Nui? Aren’t there still sheep ninjas for us to kill?”

“Actually, Gresh made a treaty with their leader,” said Mata Nui. “We aren’t fighting them anymore. They are actually our allies now and will let us pass through this mountain unharmed.”

“Really?” said Kiina. “That doesn’t sound too well-written to me.”

“Yeah, well, this comedy isn’t well-written, so it’s to be expected,” said Mata Nui with a shrug. “But let’s take advantage of it anyway. Knowing how badly written characters tend to act, King Goeep will probably change his mind and try to kill us for the heck of it just as we are leaving.”

“Aw, but I was having so much fun beating up ninjas,” said Kiina disappointedly. “But whatever. I just want this comedy to be over with already.”

“I doubt it will end any time soon,” said Mata Nui as they began walking in a random direction. “We’ll have to wait 15,000 words more*, at least.”

“Fifteen thousand? Aw, no fair,” Kiina whined.

“As long as I still get to do awesome stuff I don’t care how long this goes on,” said Mata Nui. “Now let’s go find the others and get the heck out of here. We have old-timers to rescue and ninjas to kill.”

*Fun fact: This comedy was written during National Novel Writing Month. Hence this reference.

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:19 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Chapter 22: Why yes, that was an abrupt ending last chapter, wasn’t it?

After gathering up Ackar and Berix (Berix having just finished demolishing several billion acres of trees and grass before he learned of the treaty), our four heroes and single heroine-

“Hey, I’m not single!” Kiina protested.

Okay, our four heroes and ‘happily in a relationship with someone’ heroine left the mountains. Better?

“Much,” Kiina said.

Anyway, so the good guys passed Mount Ninja now and were still heading east. None of them had any idea where the ninjas’ headquarters was. All they knew was that they had to keep going and going and going, just like the Energizer Bunny. Except, unlike the Energizer Bunny, they were the most awesome crew of ex-soldiers you’ll ever see. Not to say the Energizer Bunny isn’t awesome, but they were just cooler.

They were currently traveling through barren desert. Gigantic scorpions and snakes and other unrealistically large animals kept popping out of the sand to eat them, but since our heroes have seen much worse than those things none of the monsters survived for long. Well, except for the scorpion/vulture hybrid, but only a few people died that day, no one expected it could breathe fire, and after that it wasn’t too difficult for Mata Nui to find his way back to his home dimension again.

Night had fallen abruptly, so the party of five decided to make camp in a large gathering of huge rocks. In order to prevent the ninjas from killing them in their sleep, they set up Berix to act as watchman. Mata Nui ordered him to shoot any ninjas on sight and to wake the others in whatever way he could think of in case they were sleeping too deeply and that Berix himself should remain awake at all times. The main character also ordered him to keep the fire going because it gave them protection from ninjas, which hate the light, and that if the fire should go out that probably means they’ll all die and that all hope is lost.

Berix nodded his head the entire time while Mata Nui talked, but all he said to indicate that he had listened was, “Shoot ninjas if I see them. Got it.”

“What about that time you said you were going to come to my birthday party last year, but didn’t come until three months later?” Ackar said, clearly still annoyed by that episode.

“Hey, like you said, I came, just a few months late is all,” said Berix dismissively. “And if I do end up betraying you all, then I’ll make sure to tell the ninjas the least painful way to kill you.”

“That’s Berix, all right,” Mata Nui yawned as he lay down on his sleeping bag, which he had received courtesy of the handy dandy plot hole. “Always looking on the bright side of things. Good night, everybody.”

“Good night Kiina,” said Ackar.

“Good night, Gresh,” said Kiina.

“Goodba night, Mata Nui,” said Gresh.

“Good night, John Boy,” Mata Nui said.

“Good night, Mata Nui,” said John Boy Walton, who disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared.

After everybody had said their good nights and had gone to sleep, Berix began patrolling the outskirts of the camp. He walked three hundred full circles around the perimeter before he noticed something odd: He had passed the same rock three hundred times now and it hadn’t changed one bit. That didn’t make sense, so he decided to inspect it.

Berix stopped and began examining the rock. It looked like an ordinary, unexciting rock, but Berix felt along its surface and realized it didn’t feel like a rock. Its surface was smooth like metal. He knocked on it and heard a metallic clang echo from within.

Then he kicked it and its formed flickered in and out of view until it revealed its true form: A large projector of some kind. It was aimed directly at the camp and, turning around, he saw nothing out of the ordinary . . . until he put his hand in front of the projector’s light, that is.

For a brief moment, Berix saw his whole world transform. Rather than a dark sky, there was a bright, white ceiling of what looked like a laboratory. Mata Nui, Kiina, Ackar, and Gresh weren’t sleeping on the sand amidst a large gathering of rocks and stones. They were sleeping in a large metal cage that Berix was standing outside of.

Surprised, Berix jumped back and everything went back to normal. His heart was racing, both literally and figuratively as he realized what had happened.

I knew it, Berix thought as he turned to look at the projector. I knew it for all of these years, but I finally have proof: I am in the Matrix. The robots are keeping us sapient beings from knowing it by making our whole world look normal, when in fact they are trying to keep us from figuring out what is really going on. I must set us free!

He pulled out his guns and shot the projector, which exploded. Everything suddenly faded, revealing the true form of this place: Everything was shiny white, like a laboratory, and he was standing on a table outside of the cage his friends were stuck in.

And standing above him were two giant ninjas in lab coats, both of them looking at him in surprise.

“So it looks like you were not fooled by the illusion,” said one of the giant ninjas as he began writing in his clipboard. “Or was it an accident?”

“The experiment did not work as planned,” said the second ninja, glaring at Berix like he was an annoying insect. “We will have to kill you, unless the Grand Shogun has other plans for you.”

“Am I in the Matrix?” Berix asked eagerly.

“Of course not!” said the first giant scientist ninja, shaking his head. “After you escaped Mount Ninja, we ninjas moved you during your sleep and placed you in this lab and then put you in an illusion that looks exactly like the location in which you made camp. Then we would perform evil ninja experiments on you and no one would be able to stand in the Grand Shogun’s way!”

“How’d you do it so quickly?” asked Berix in confusion. “I was wide awake the entire time, you know.”

“Ninjas move faster than anything else,” said the second ninja scientist. “We move so fast that even time itself has a hard time catching up to us. Sometimes it never does.”

He raised one hand and Berix could only stare at it in horror. The hand looked withered and ancient, but the arm it was attached to appeared strong and young, like that of an Olympic athlete.

“This arm has moved so fast that only the hand – which is slightly slower than the rest of my body by about 0.3 seconds – aged unnaturally fast,” said the second ninja. He leaned in closer to Berix and whispered, “I should be dead right now, but I move so fast that time will not catch up to me for several hundred millennia at the least.”

“Stop exaggerating,” said the first ninja scientist. “Just because you’re over three thousand years old doesn’t mean you’re-“

“Regardless of my age, I believe we cannot allow this little Agori to live any longer, brother,” said the second ninja scientist. He raised a long pen and clicked the end, causing a sharp knife blade to sprout from it. “We will also have to kill his friends, too, because we do not have any more illusion projectors on hand at the moment. We were going to do it anyway, but we had so much fun taking notes on you that we totally forgot.”

“Ooo, a pen knife?” said Berix, eyeing the second ninja’s weapon with interest. “My grandfather gave me one eons ago when I was only 5.6 years old. I accidentally swallowed it when I was a kid, though, but I’ve only suffered from internal bleeding as a result of it.”

“You must not have swallowed it correctly, then,” said the first giant ninja. “You put the bottom end in first-“

“Brother, you can explain that to him after we kill him,” said the second ninja as he raised his own pen knife, which was colored pink for some reason.

“Okay, brother,” said the first ninja with a sigh. “I just don’t like seeing ignorant people die. That’s all.”

Berix drew his double barrel guns, ready to take on these ninjas no matter the cost, although if it was over $50 he would look elsewhere for cheaper prices.

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:23 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

The twin giant ninja scientist brothers leapt into the air and tried to strike Berix with one blow, but the Agori performed a back flip to avoid being crushed beneath their feet. He then bounced off of one of the walls and rocketed into their stomachs, sending the ninja twins flying into the opposite wall.

But being ninjas, they recovered halfway to the wall and then used their momentum to jump off of the wall and back onto the floor. Then they drew shruikens from their lab coats and hurled hundreds of them at Berix.

Berix ducked, dodge, and even shot a few shruikens out of the air as he made his way to the ninja brothers. He jumped off of one of the ninja throwing stars and flew forward with such speed that he broke a part of reality because it couldn’t handle the awesomeness.

However, the ninja bros leapt over Berix and, just as he was passing underneath them, they brought their iron-clad feet down on his back, sending him smashing through the floor at 1000 miles per hour.

“Ha, take that!” the first ninja said as he folded his arms. “No one can survive our Scientific 0% Chance of Survival Killing Feet technique! It is unstoppable and, more importantly, scientific!”

At first, there was no response. Then they heard a groan and Berix rose from the debris, stretching his arms and legs like he had been taking a long nap.

“Impossible!” the second ninja gasped, taking a dramatic step backward with his brother as Berix dusted off his guns. “No one has been able to withstand even one blow from our Scientific 0% Chance of Survival Killing Feet technique! It is unstoppable, and, more importantly, scientific!”

Berix shrugged, like he was used to this kind of thing. “Yeah, about that. See, your scientific chance foot killing technique thingamabob may be unstoppable and, more importantly, scientific, but I don’t believe in science. I believe in miracles. I believe in love. And I believe in awesome.”

Without moving a muscle Berix fired off two shots, instantly disarming the twin giants without them even realizing it until they could not feel the weapons in their hands anymore.

“And I believe I am going to kick your twin butts to next year,” Berix said with a smirk. “So get ready to ROCK!”

Berix ran at the speed of stupidity, which caused the second ninja to exclaim, “Impossible! Science cannot be thrown aside! It answers all of life’s questions!”

Berix jumped up into the air and for a moment he floated in the second ninja’s face. “That’s funny. I didn’t know life had any questions to begin with!”

He reared back and delivered a devastating kick to the second ninja’s head, sending the second ninja flying through the wall with the force of the earthquake. Then he spun around to unleash another devastating kick, but the first ninja saw it coming and blocked it with his arm. A resounding crack echoed through the room as Berix’s leg collided with the scientist’s arm, but the first ninja held back the force of Berix’s kick with surprising strength.

“I am stronger than my younger brother,” the first ninja said through gritted teeth, for Berix’s leg was a lot stronger than he’d anticipated. “I, Takeshi, can withstand much more pain than him!”

“Oh, yeah?” said Berix with equal grit as he attempted to break through Takeshi’s arm. “Withstand this!”

He shot his double barrel guns at Takeshi, who caught the bullets between his fingers. Takeshi smirked, figuring he had outsmarted Berix.

But as it turned out, Berix had out-outsmarted him, for the next moment the bullets exploded in Takeshi’s face. His concentration shattered, Takeshi forgot to hold back Berix and was immediately sent flying through the wall opposite the one his brother had been smashed through. Berix landed and did a little dance.

“’I can withstand more pain than my brother,’” Berix said in a mocking tone. “Yeah, and I’m the queen of England after undergoing plastic surgery!”

Neither Takeshi nor his unnamed brother got back up, so Berix walked over to the cage where his friends were and shot the locks off. He kicked open the door and walked inside.

The others were still sleeping, despite the rather noisy fight between Berix and the ninja brothers. They hadn’t even stirred, as far as Berix could see. They slept like babies, although that is a poor analogy since babies don’t sleep very well and always keep their parents awake at night due to their incessant crying. But since people seem to be under the impression that babies sleep quietly and peacefully, we’ll use that analogy for the heck of it.

“I wonder if I should wake them up,” said Berix as he stroked his chin. “On one hand, Mata Nui would want to know about this. But on the other hand . . . I’m sleepy. Good night.”

Berix immediately crumpled to the table’s surface and began snoring loudly. He figured he would tell them in the morning, if he remembered, so his mind floated into the land of dreams, where he began dreaming of watching himself watching himself on TV who was watching himself watch himself on TV. It was a weird dream.

But he liked weird, so it’s all good.

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:26 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Chapter 24: Yes, We Know You Want To See This Done and Over With, But We Can Still Stretch It

The next morning, Mata Nui was the first to awake. Their campsite appeared relatively unchanged; bleak, barren wasteland in every direction, giant boulders surrounding them like golems, and a bright, burning sun overhead baking the sand. He looked around and saw that everyone else was still asleep, including Berix, who was mumbling in his sleep, “I don’t want to watch myself watch myself on TV watching myself anymore . . .”

“I wonder if I should shoot him for not staying up all night like I ordered him to,” said Mata Nui as he grabbed some sand and ate it. Then he said, “Nah. He’s still necessary for now, although if worse comes to worse, I very well might have to do something about him. Or maybe I’m just being melodramatic. Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Mata Nui got up and stretched his limbs. Then he bent over and picked up his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle, twirled it in his hands, and then held it on his shoulder. Since the baked sand hadn’t filled his stomach, he decided to go hunting and get something for him and the others to eat for breakfast.

He had strayed only three feet from camp when a gigantic sand worm burst out of the sand, spitting and hissing as it reared its head back. Its gigantic maw opened wide enough that it could have easily swallowed Mata Nui whole had he not reacted.

Mata Nui aimed and shot the monster in one swift motion. A bullet from his 40kMGA went flying into the sand worm’s mouth and into its body, causing its head to explode. Since this in a kids’ comedy, we’ll just say lots and lots of candy flew from the stump where its head had been, which allowed Mata Nui to, ah, prepare the rest of the sand worm for breakfast.

He hauled as much as he could of the beast back to camp in a sack, where he found everyone else awake. Berix, as usual, appeared pretty peppy, while Ackar, Gresh, and Kiina all looked tired and irritated, like they hadn’t got much sleep last night.

“Ugh, I feel like I slept on a table last night,” said Ackar as he rubbed his back.

“Well, I feel like I can take on a hundred trillion ninjas without breaking a sweat!” Berix announced, bouncing so hard that the rock he was sitting on turned into dust. “Also, I had this weird dream last night where I was watching myself watching myself watching myself on TV who was watching myself watching myself on another TV who was-“

“We get it, Berix,” Ackar said, cutting him off.

“Well, I don’t!” Berix replied.

Ackar sighed and then looked up and saw Mata Nui approaching with a bag of sand worm slung over his shoulder. “What’s that you got there, Mata Nui?”

Mata Nui threw the bag down at his feet and replied, “Gen-u-ine sand worm meat. We can cook it for breakfast. Hi-yah!”

Mata Nui kicked the bag with enough force that the heat from his body heated the meat inside it to just the right temperature, making it instantly edible for all five of them.

“Dig in,” Mata Nui offered as he took a piece of meat himself.

After everyone had finished their meal, Mata Nui pulled out a map he had gotten from shut up and laid it out before them. They all crowded around to look at it.

“Okay, this is where we are currently,” said Mata Nui, pointing at a spot on the map labeled ‘Desert of Uncomfortable Deaths.’ “And over here is the ninja headquarters, Grand Di-Shogun Land.”

He pointed at an immense factory-like fortress on the other side of the map, which was indeed labeled ‘Grand Di-Shogun Land.’ Based on the map’s illustrations, giant ninjas appeared to guard its disproportionate gates, with flaming swords and whips in their hands, ready to whip anyone who tried to get past them.

“It will probably take us a few more days to reach their fortress by steed,” said Mata Nui as he drew a line from their location to the fortress. “To get there, we can either head directly through a place known only as ‘Death’s Land’ or we can go around it through ‘Happy Happy Fun Time Land.’”

Ackar peered more closely at the map. ‘Death’s Land,’ as it was called, appeared to be nothing more than a long stretch of gray, barren earth with dead trees and forests dotting it, while ‘Happy Happy Fun Time Land’ appeared to be ruled by Barbie, for it was disgustingly pink, filled with flowers and ponies and the Great Beings know what else that was disgustingly cute.

“Either route would get us there within four or five days if I’ve done my math right,” said Mata Nui as he pulled out a calculator. “And if I did my math wrong we’ll end up wandering there for several weeks before we kill each other due to lack of food.”

“I say we go to Happy Happy Fun Time Land,” said Berix, pointing at its spot on the map. “It’s got ponies!”

“No way,” said Kiina, shaking her head and pointing at Death’s Land. “I’m a girl and even I would rather take my chances with Death’s Land.”

“It does, but I think it would be cooler if we went to Death’s Land,” said Ackar.

Suddenly, a figure popped out of the sand, catching all of them by surprise. Everyone drew their weapons and aimed them – including their short range weapons like their swords – at the figure, which appeared to be an old, withered Agori who wore only a loincloth. That was odd, since Agori normally did not wear that type of clothing or any clothing at all if Berix was any indication of the average Agori.

Regardless, the Agori was clearly some kind of lunatic and Mata Nui was ready to take him down if he proved a threat.

“Who are you?” Ackar demanded. “Tell us who you are and we will kill you.”

“I am Kyry,” the Agori hissed as he crawled over the sand like a bug. “Or . . . I was Kyry. No one remembers me anymore, not after what I once did.”

“What’d you do, forget to bathe?”Kiina asked, grimacing as his terrible scent.

“Nooooooo,” said Kyry, shaking his head back and forth. “I went into Death’s Land and there . . . I met death.”

There was a dramatic silence that followed as the words sunk into our five heroes. Then Ackar said, “But if that’s the case, then why are you still alive?”

“You fool!” Kyry hissed as he jumped at them like a snake, although he didn’t reach them. “I am being literal here. I met Death himself and, because my time had not yet come, he turned me insane!”

His eyeballs rolled into the back of his head as he continued, “Do not enter Death’s Land if you wish to survive! Death himself is unmerciful towards the living and soon-to-be dead. He will not allow you to pass through his land unharmed. Even if you are not meant to die at that moment, he will find a way to quicken your death, as he did to me.”

“But you’re still here,” said Ackar, pointing at him.

“But Death is upon me!” Kyry hissed as he waved his hands crazily through the air. “Any day now, I know he will come to claim my soul. He will attempt to send me to the afterlife due to the sins I committed in my mortal life. He will do the same to you if you attempt to pass through his land!”

“Well, then, we’ll just head through Happy Happy Fun Time Land,” said Mata Nui, shrugging. “It really doesn’t matter which way we go anyway. As long as it takes us to the Grand Di-Shogun Land, we’ll be fine.”

“Yessssss,” Kyry hissed, his voice becoming suspiciously like that of a snake. “Happy Happy Fun Time Land will be much, much safer. Go through there, and you might retain your sanity, unlike me.”

With that, Kyry let loose a bizarre cry that sounded like a chipmunk on helium using auto tune. Then he burrowed underneath the sand and was instantly gone.

“Huh, that guy was weird,” said Ackar. “Anyway, let’s go through Death’s Land. Looks like it’ll be loads of fun!”

“I have no idea what you just said, Gresh, but it sounded worried,” said Mata Nui as he placed a reassuring hand on Gresh’s shoulder. “We’ll be fine. Kyry is probably just crazy. Even if we do have to face Death himself, I have the strongest feeling he’ll be running back to his precious little afterlife after we’re through with him.”

“And this could also be a good way to stretch this comedy out even more than we already have,” Berix added.

“Yeah, Gresh,” said Kiina harshly. “Stop being such a coward. I’d shoot myself if I took even one step into Happy Happy Fun Time Land.”

“I’d shoot myself if we . . . um . . . uh . . .” said Berix as he struggled to think. “Well, the point is . . . Okay, I don’t have anything to say.”

“Then why say anything at all?” asked Ackar incredulously.

“The author is trying to reach the word count by forcing me to say random and unnecessary stuff,” said Berix with a shrug. “It’s a part of the reason most of what I say is complete nonsense.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“The other part is that I have a really, really bad rash,” said Berix with a smile. “Bad rashes cause me to see the sky blue, when we all know it’s really orange!”

“It is blue, Berix,” said Ackar.

“What? It is?” Berix said in shock. “I never knew that!”

“Stop arguing over such pointless subjects,” Mata Nui snapped. “The sky is purple, after all. Anyway I say we take a vote on where we want to go. All in favor of Death’s Land?”

“Then it is settled,” said Mata Nui as he rolled up the map. “We’re going to Disneyland! Er, I mean, Death’s Land! Let’s get going already.”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:35 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Chapter 25: How Many More Meaningless Subplots Can I Throw In Before I Lose All of My Readers?

After breaking camp, the group headed directly east, toward Death’s Land. Gresh still worried about Kyry’s warning, but he said nothing as they continued east. Not that he was really worried; after all, they’d faced much worse things than Death himself before. There was also the possibility Kyry was just crazy and had been exaggerating everything.

About a day later, the group reached a crossroad. There was a sign stuck in the middle of the fork. The top sign pointed straight ahead, labeled, ‘DEATH’s LAND.’ The letters appear to be written in blood.

The sign beneath it pointed to the north and the words read, ‘HAPPY HAPPY FUN TIME LAND.’ The words were written in sparkly, sickeningly glittery powder that almost made them sick.

“So we just head straight ahead,” said Mata Nui, pointing east. “Evidently that is where Death’s Land is located, if the bloody sign is any indication.”

So they passed the signs and almost immediately ended up in a gray, barren, rocky land with dead trees that dotted the plane. Dark clouds obscured the sun and a cold, bitter wind cut through their armor like a knife. They saw bloodstains all over the ground, trees, rocks, and just about everywhere, although none of them felt particularly nervous about this.

The oddest thing, as they walked along, was that the area behind the sign had not appeared to be this dark and gloomy before they passed it. Perhaps they had ended up in some kind of bizarre pocket dimension or something. It’s either that or the author doesn’t understand geography very well, which is more likely.

Anyway, so our heroes were casually walking along without a care in the world when suddenly a dark figure in black robes, holding a scythe, rose from the ground without warning. It was impossible to see his face underneath his hood, but his skeletal hands remained quite visible. Blood dripped from his scythe, creating a small pool underneath the weapon.

“ARGH!” Death roared in frustration. “You have fooled me three times! For that you must die!”

“Think of something more original – and accurate – to say for once,” Kiina snapped exasperatedly. “I mean, geez, you’re so stupid I almost wish we went to Happy Happy Fun Time Land instead.”

“Happy Happy Fun Time Land?” Death repeated. Then his face – if he had one – broke into a nasty grin. “Why, I can’t kill you, but surely those who dwell in Happy Happy Fun Time Land can!”

“Hey, you just confirmed we can’t die today,” said Ackar.

“Ho, ho, mortal, I did not,” said Death, shaking his hooded head. “I only said you would not die today at my hands. You will instead die at the hands of the warriors of Happy Happy Fun Time Land. I am so evil like that.”

“’Happy Happy Fun Time Land’ doesn’t sound like a particularly deadly place,” said Ackar. “I mean, any place that uses the word ‘happy’ in its name twice probably isn’t all that dangerous, nor grammatically correct.”

“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, mortal,” said Death as he rubbed his hands together evilly. “You have no idea what lurks in the deepest, happiest corners of Happy Happy Fun Time Land. Indeed, I can confirm today that you will all die there. Mwahahahaha!”

“That’s fine and all, but as you can clearly see we are not in Happy Happy Fun Time Land,” Mata Nui pointed out. “So I doubt we will all die there today.”

“Not unless I teleport you there!” Death shouted. “Good bye!”

With a snap of Death’s fingers, Mata Nui, Kiina, Gresh, Ackar, and Berix suddenly disappeared and ended up in a very strange – and very pink – world.

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:38 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Chapter 26: How Many Readers Do I Have Left Now? Maybe Three? Two And A Half If I Am Lucky?

One moment, Berix and his friends had been standing before Death himself. The next, they were standing in what looked like a world of complete pinkness until Berix’s eyes adjusted to what he was seeing. Although there was still a lot of pink everywhere, at least he was able to distinguish objects from each other. And what he saw made even him, a hardened soldier, shudder in fright.

Frolicking pink ponies frolicked across endless fields of pink flowers and grass, while the sun literally smiled down on them with the stupidest grin ever. Everything – and when I say everything, I mean everything – appeared to have bucket loads of glitter on it. Some of the flowers even had faces on them and one looked up at Berix, smiled at him, and waved at the Agori, before Berix stomped on the freak of nature.

The clouds overhead were shaped like hearts and ponies, for some bizarre reason. Some kind of extremely happy music was playing softly in the background, but Berix could not make out any sound systems or anything to explain the music.

“Iba think Iba like Death’s Land betterba,” said Gresh, his eyes watering from the horrid smell.

“So this is Death’s diabolical plan,” said Mata Nui, his voice full of revulsion. “He thinks we will not be able to survive this . . . this extremely kawaii land.”

“I am afraid he is probably right,” said Ackar with a shudder. “What kind of insanity is this place? There are no swords . . . no guns . . . no action . . . no nothing. It’s so anti-manly that it makes me want to punch somebody in the face.”

A happy, frolicking pony went galloping by, but Ackar whirled and punched it in the face.

“Couldn’t hold it in,” he said as he shook his fist and turned away from the pony, which now had a fresh fist-shaped dent in its head. “Somebody had to teach those ponies a lesson for tasting like super sugary sweets.”

“What’d we do, Mata Nui?” asked Kiina urgently. “How do we get out of this place?”

“I don’t know,” said Mata Nui. “We can’t turn around, since we aren’t sure which way leads back. Instead, we’ll just have to prove Death wrong and get out of here alive and in one piece.”

“But is that even possible?” asked Ackar grimly. “Look at this place . . . not even the most hardened, battle-ready warrior could ever hope to survive this.”

“That is why it will take five hardened, battle-ready warriors to survive this,” said Mata Nui as he loaded his gun. “We’ll beat Death’s prediction and get out of here alive. Then our final showdown with the ninjas will begin.”

-

Our five heroes, through a complicated computation which would confuse even a college math professor, eventually figured out which direction was east. So they turned in that direction and traveled for a few hours, undisturbed by the frolicking ponies and smiling flowers that they passed.

Eventually, however, a huge explosion of pink and happiness erupted in front of them, causing our heroes to rein in their sand stalkers, which had been spooked by the explosion.

When the pink dust cleared, a pink pony with braided hair and multicolor eyes stood before them. It didn’t look particularly threatening, but it appeared to be oozing kawaii-y-ness, which caused everyone to aim their weapons at it.

“Hello!” the pony said in such a high-pitched voice that a wineglass Berix was holding shattered. “My name’s Stephanie, but you can like, call me Steph!”

“She’s weird,” Ackar muttered to Mata Nui.

“I’m not a girl!” Stephanie protested.

“Then why is your name Stephanie and why do you have a girl’s voice?” asked Mata Nui.

“Because it is so kawaii, duh!” He giggled. “And I’m not a guy, either! Now what are your names?”

Mata Nui decided not to ponder the implications of that. So he said, “My name is Mata Nui. This is Ackar, he’s Gresh, he’s Berix, and she is Kiina.”

“I am so much more kawaii than you are,” Berix told Stephanie.

Stephanie’s expression darkened for a brief moment before she giggled again and said, “Right, I’m sure you are.”

“Could you please help us find a way out of here?” asked Mata Nui, ignoring the conversation between them.“

But why would you EVER want to leave this place?” asked Stephanie in surprise. “This is like, the most kawaii place on earth! We have tea parties and smiley flowers and pretty ponies and-“

“That, Stephanie, is precisely the reason we find this place disgusting,” Kiina interrupted.

“Like Kiina said, we think this place is . . . less than comfortable for us,” said Mata Nui. “Could you at least tell us if we’re heading east?”

“Oh, I don’t know which direction is which,” said Stephanie with a shrug. “North is south, south is north, west is east, east is west to me. It’s not really kawaii, so why should I know it?”

“Well,” said Mata Nui, who was beginning to feel annoyed by this magical pink pony, “do you have a map of Happy Happy Fun Time Land, at the very least?”

“Maps aren’t kawaii, either,” said Stephanie, shaking his head. “Instead, we rely on our inner sense of kawaii-ness found in us all to guide us.”

“In other words, you just wander around and hope you get somewhere interesting,” Ackar said dryly. “Yeah, not my cup of tea.”

“Well, since you don’t seem to be very informative, we’re just going to continue on our way,” said Mata Nui. “Good bye, Stephanie.”

They tried to go around her, but then he jumped in their way again and said, “But you can’t go! At least, not with those un-kawaii weapons you got there!”

“Sorry, but we like our weapons as they are,” said Mata Nui shortly. “You can just go be ‘kawaii’ somewhere else.”

“But don’t you want to be kawaii?” she pleaded. “Kawaii makes the world go round!”

“Sorry, but we are happy with how we are,” said Mata Nui firmly. “Now move, or else we will be forced to hurt you.”

Stephanie suddenly went quiet. His eyes glowed pinkly as she said, breathing heavily, “Very well, then. If you will not submit to kawaii, then you must be eliminated!”

Suddenly, all of the ponies around them stopped frolicking and immediately turned around until they were directly facing our heroes, some paused in mid-jump. Although the ponies did not have any weapons, Mata Nui felt tense. Something in the ponies’ eyes made him feel uneasy.

“So what are your pretty little ponies going to do to us, frolic us to death?” Ackar mocked. “They don’t look threatening to me.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, all of the ponies started to change. Giant spikes sprouted from out of their backs; scales in all the colors of the rainbow replaced their pink fur; long, muscular limbs as thick as pine trees sprouted from their legs; huge, insect-like wings sprouted from their backs; and humungous stingers the size of taxi crabs grew from within their hairy tails. Their faces contorted and transformed into skulls with fiery lions’ manes, their empty sockets bathing our heroes in pinkish light.

“Okay, so maybe they do look threatening,” said Ackar, slightly nervously. “But we can still beat them, I reckon.”

One of the ponies – for want of a better term – reared its head up and roared into the sky. Immediately, a cloud that had been drifting peacefully along exploded into pieces.

“Well, they might be a bit of a challenge,” Ackar reasoned.

Another monster pony ripped a tree from its roots and hurled it into the sky. The tree went flying so fast it burst into flames and then slammed into a star, blowing the star up and causing a super nova that probably destroyed several nearby inhabited planets.

“What do you want me to say?” Ackar asked, looking up into the sky. “That we’re totally outclassed here?”

Nah, I just wanted to have a random funny moment.

“Uh huh,” said Ackar disbelievingly. “Right. I’m sure that’s it.”

“It does not matter if these things can destroy whole universes!” Mata Nui declared as he raised his rifle and aimed it at Stephanie, who had also transformed into a similar monster pony. “We’ll crush them like tin cans! Charge!”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:44 PM.

0

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Ackar deflected a strike from one of the monster ponies – which we shall henceforth refer to as ‘monies’ – and shattered its stinger with one swift stroke. Then he raised his free hand and unleashed a wave of fire that annihilated the monie instantly.

Another monie came up from behind him, raised its bloody claws (where the blood came from we shall never know) and brought them down on the awesome old man.

But Ackar twisted out of the way and the monie’s claws became embedded so deeply into the dirt that it was incapable of ripping them out.

Then Ackar ran up its arm and sliced the monie’s head off. He leapt off of its shoulder, performed an insane amount of summersaults in midair, and landed on another monie, which he silenced with a devastating blow from his sword.

More monies surrounded him, but Ackar wasn’t bothered by that. He ran underneath them, slashing at their legs as he ran, causing them to fall. He then unleashed a wave of awesome that destroyed them all immediately. Then he reversed time, causing them to come back to life, and destroyed them instantly again. He repeated this a third time until he got bored and decided not to reverse time again.

Another large group was charging at him and Ackar, his sword ready, ran to meet them, yelling a battle cry that due to its high frequency would have destroyed a normal being.

-

Kiina seized one of the monies and flipped it like a coin. She literally flipped it like a coin. She grabbed it, positioned it in her hand just right, and then flipped it high into the air. How she achieved this when the monie was several times larger than her hand and was much heavier than the average coin is unknown, but if you are still questioning things like this by now then you are probably taking this comedy way too seriously.

Then she shot the monie and it exploded, raining down molten monie mush onto the mumbling monies which meandered in many directions to avoid the molten monie mush.

Then she kicked up a large chunk of earth from the ground and kicked it at a nearby monie. The chunk of dirt crashed into the monie and sent him flying into another monie. The force of that impact sent both monies flying into a third, which caused the trio to fly into a large crowd of monies, which caused a massive explosion that would have incinerated the area had Kiina not shot it and caused it to explode harmlessly in midair.

Kiina stopped suddenly and said, frowning, “Huh, I have the strangest feeling something like that has happened before in this comedy. Must just be my imagination.”

She whirled around and punched out a monie with enough force to send it flying into a nearby cloud. Then she jumped into the air and floated there Matrix-style while she shot several monies with enough bullets that would have destroyed an entire planet.

She landed on the ground and said, “Geez, give us a real challenge for once!”

She then ran headlong into another group of monies, hoping to finish this quickly, for she could see that there were only 9,000 words to go before the word count limit was reached.

-

Gresh got on his head and performed a tornado kick. We have mentioned him pulling off such a move before, but have never actually described the tornado kick. So here’s a detailed description of what a tornado kick looks like:

As Gresh’s legs spun through the air, his feet caught clouds and absorbed the heat and coldness within them. This, combined with the speed at which Gresh is spinning, allows his body to charge up enough energy to channel the power of the tornado through his legs. Thus, whenever he hits somebody with his tornado kick, it is like literally being hit with a tornado.

Yes, that doesn’t make any sense. Shut up. We don’t care.

So Gresh annihilated several monies with his tornado kick and then transitioned to his feet with ease. He then separated his shield, giving him double arm blades, and rushed a nearby monie. He jumped into the air, slashed with extreme speed, and then landed on the ground behind the monie with the grace of a ninja (though he was by no means a ninja of any kind).

The monie – which looked pretty whole at first – immediately fell apart, its pieces crashing hard on the ground. Gresh stood up and wiped dust off of his armor, muttering, “Losersba.”

Another monie appeared out of nowhere and tried to tackle him football-style (American football that is, for you non-Americans reading this). But Gresh dodged it and with a single shot from his gun sent the poor monie to the afterlife. He then seized its body and hurled it at another monie, which caused a gigantic nuclear explosion that destroyed another legion of monies.

He leapt into the air and rained doom, death, destruction, and all of that other happy stuff down upon the monies, incinerating most of them and heavily damaging the survivors. Gresh performed too many summersaults to count on his way down and, when he landed, he somehow created a huge wave of destruction that destroyed all of the monies within a ten mile radius.

Gresh got up to his feet, wiped the dust and dirt off of his armor, and then noticed that there were no more monies for him to fight.

“Looks like Iba killed themba all,” Gresh observed as he put his arm blades back together in the form of a shield. “Oh wellba. Iba better findba my friends. Hopefully theyba be okayba.”

-

For the first time, Berix noticed that there were billions of monies surrounding him. Huh, when they’d get there? he wondered.

He decided it didn’t matter, for a million monies leapt at him at once. Moving faster than the speed of light, he whirled around and fired one shot. As all of the monies had been in one convenient straight line, the single bullet pierced through them all, which somehow caused them to explode.

Berix then jumped off of the explosion and delivered a devastating flying kick to another million monies. He ducked to avoid the deadly claws of a monie. He seized the monie’s outstretched claws and ripped them off with enough force to cause candy to go spewing out of the monie’s hand. With the force of the earthquake Berix kicked the monie, sending it flying so fast it literally broke through the atmosphere and crashed into the moon.

Then he put the candy-covered claw on his hand and, with a roar like a hyena, began to rip through his foes with such terror that they all ran away. Unfortunately, not a single one was strong enough to stand against Berix’s terrible claw, which he had somehow fused with his double barrel guns, creating a claw that also shot bullets.

He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that a monie had broken off from the main group and was attempting to escape on its own. He shot a bullet at it and – with the speed and agility of a ninja – leapt onto the bullet and went flying toward the fleeing monie.

“Darn you!” Berix shouted as his speeding bullet drew closer and closer to the monie. “Don’t you realize there’s safety in numbers? So why’d you run?!?!?!? WHY?!?!?!?”

He back-flipped off of his bullet just as it slammed into the monie’s head, causing the monie to stumble forward and create a great, big trench in the ground that looked like a moat. In fact, Berix filled the newly-dug moat with water he had gotten from nowhere, filled that with crocodiles, and then erected a gigantic castle in the middle of it. He christened the castle “Castle Berix,” since the top tower was shaped exactly like his head.

Then he went back to butt-kicking without a care in the world.

-

While the others did their thing, Mata Nui had chosen to take on Stephanie herself, whom had also transformed into a monie. This wasn’t easy, however, for Stephanie was a coward and had unleashed the doom flowers to trap Mata Nui.

The doom flowers had originally been the normal, happy smiling flowers that Mata Nui had seen earlier. But now that the ponies were monies, the flowers also got in on the act. They grew to the size of full-grown trees, with branches just as thick. Their smiley faces weren’t smiling anymore. Now they looked more like ugly scowls as they loomed over Mata Nui.

But our hero wasn’t afraid of flowers. With a single blast from his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle Mata Nui sent one of the doom flowers to kingdom come. He kept taking them out one by one until there were no more doom flowers left.

Stephanie clapped her hands together and unleashed a wave of sound at Mata Nui. Our hero jumped straight over the wave and then jumped off of it straight toward Stephanie. As he flew, Mata Nui shot round after round of shot gun shots at the monie leader, striking him in the chest several times.

However, the bullets just bounced off of her body harmlessly, which Mata Nui noticed as he landed.

“Fire breathing? That’s so cliché,” Mata Nui complained. “But if I can’t beat you with guns, then I can beat you with this!”

Mata Nui held out his hand. Energy began swirling around it lightning crackled and burnt the ground until with a huge explosion of awesome a sword materialized in Mata Nui’s hand. He gripped the sword tightly and turned to Stephanie, saying, “Like this, foo’?”

“Ha! What can a puny little knife like that do to me?” Stephanie asked mockingly. “Are you just going to poke me or-“

With blinding speed, Mata Nui ran at her and, swinging his newly created sword, cut off both of the monie’s wings and then slashed at her back. With a cry of pain Stephanie stumbled forward, candy pouring from his fresh wounds as she did so.

“I sure ‘poked’ you hard, didn’t I?” Mata Nui asked as he rested his sword on his shoulder, smiling smugly. “Maybe you’re the one who should be asking what you’re going to do to me.”

Stephanie whirled around and roared with such ferocity that Mata Nui was sent flying. But as he flew, Mata Nui hurled his sword at her. The sword struck Stephanie in the chest, causing her to gasp in surprise and cutting off his kind of lame attack.

Mata Nui landed on his feet just as Stephanie ripped the sword from her chest and yelled, “Okay, that’s it! Time to destroy you with my kawaii powers!”

He thrust her hands forward and unleashed an all-consuming fiery wall of pinkish energy. It was too high to jump over and too wide to dodge. Unless Mata Nui did something quick, he knew that he would be consumed by the power of kawaii.

Until he got the craziest idea ever, that is.

He raised his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle and aimed it directly at the oncoming wall of kawaii, hoping his plan would work.

“What are you doing?” Stephanie shouted. “Bullets don’t work on me or the power of kawaii!”

Mata Nui smiled. “Who said I was going to shoot you with bullets?”

Mata Nui then thrust his gun forward and, activating its special ability, absorbed the power of kawaii with his 40kMGA. His gun was shaking so violently, however, that he knew it couldn’t keep all of that power inside of it forever. So with a pull of the trigger he unleashed the power of kawaii right back at Stephanie, at 1000 times its original power.

Mata Nui never did get to learn exactly what he was, for the next moment she was engulfed by the wave of kawaii. Energy swirled around him, enveloping her whole body in a pink bubble that looked like gum. Finally, with a roar of pain, the kawaii energy exploded, then imploded, and exploded again as Mata Nui turned around all awesome-y.

“Too easy, suckah foo’,” said Mata Nui triumphantly. “Or should I say: that fight was so kawaii!”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:51 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

With all of the monies either killed or defeated, Mata Nui reunited with his gang. None of them looked any worse for the wear. In fact, everyone looked even stronger and healthier than before, as if they had somehow absorbed the essence of their foes that they had killed in combat.

“So what’d we do now, Mata Nui?” asked Ackar as they mounted their steeds.

“We find our way out of here, of course,” said Mata Nui as they rode. “Remember, we are still heading for Grand Di-Shogun Land. We can’t dilly-dally here any longer than we have to.”

“It’s funny,” said Ackar. “That Death guy said we were supposed to die here. But we didn’t, as far as I can tell.”

“That’s becauseba weba awesome,” Gresh responded. “Duh.”

Without warning, a figure in dark clothes wielding a scythe appeared out of nowhere. It was Death and he looked very angry, although it was very difficult to tell due to the hood which obscured his face.

“Darn it!” Death whined, like a little child who was deprived of his favorite treat. “Darn it, darn it, darn it! I thought you were going to die here, today, at the hands of the monies! No fair!”

“Hey, bud, we can’t have everything we want in life,” said Ackar coldly. “That’s just life.”

“Yeah, because if we did I’d be a pretty ballerina fairy princess rather than a butt-kicking ex-soldier who escaped from a high-security insane asylum,” Berix added, nodding.

“But how can you be wrong, anyway?” Mata Nui asked, puzzled. “You’re Death. Shouldn’t you know for absolute sure who is supposed to die when?”

“Well, it’s based on this complicated mathematical system that I don’t always understand,” said Death with a shrug. “So sometimes I make a mistake and it turns out that person won’t die after all. Math was never my strong suit in college.”

“You went to college?” Mata Nui asked in amazement.

“Yeah,” said Death, nodding. “I went to the University of Interdimensional Super Entities, or UISE for short. I majored in death, which is how I got the job.”

“Really?” said Mata Nui impressed. “I heard UISE is a hard college to get into.”

“Yeah, you got to have top grades and everything,” said Death as he put one hand to his head. “I took some college courses online in high school, though, to get credit, which helped simplify things a bit.”

“I see,” said Mata Nui. “You are obviously a very intelligent embodiment of death if that is the case.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Death modestly, although Mata Nui could tell he liked that. “I’m just a humble- HEY WAIT JUST A DARN MINUTE HERE!”

He pointed his bloody scythe at our heroes and growled, “Don’t you dare attempt to trick me for the fourth time. I won’t let you continue on to your destination. Instead, I’ll just keep sending you to the most dangerous places I can think of until you finally die. You will never escape your doom! Mwahahaha!”

“But what if we’re supposed to die in Grand Di-Shogun’s Land?” asked Ackar quickly. “That’s where we’re heading anyway. If you send us there, we might die, just as you wished.”

“Really?” said Death. “I never thought of it that way. Well, fine, then. I shall send you to this ‘Grand Di-Shogun’s Land’ and then you shall die there! Mwahahaha! I am so smart and evil! There’s a reason I have a doctorate in death! Good bye!”

With a snap of his bony fingers, our heroes were immediately teleported away, while Death himself felt pleased with how smart he was. Sending them off to their deaths like that was good, even if they had wanted to go. He was smart, oh so smart, and-

“Wait just a darn moment here!” Death said suddenly, snapping his fingers again. “Rule number one of being the grim reaper is to never let your victims choose their own death! And I just let them choose! They have fooled me yet again, for the fifth time! Why, if I cared, I would go after them and send them some place they don’t want to go, like the Land of Uncomfortable Mattresses or the Canyon of Unfriendly Neighbors. But no, instead they get to go to the land of the ninjas because I gave into their wishes!”

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Mata Nui and the gang immediately appeared in the middle of nowhere. A conveniently placed nearby sign read, “WELCOME TO GRAND DI-SHOGUN’S LAND, WHERE ALL VISITORS USUALLY DIE IN THEIR SLEEP.”

“That’s reassuring,” said Ackar grimly, after reading the sign.

“Sure is!” Berix agreed. “I think dying in your sleep is better than dying alive. I mean, your last dream could be your best, where you and Michael Jackson are cruising around New York throwing eggs and tomatoes at random pedestrians. Then, when you die, you’ll be able to say you died doing what you love most.”

“Uh, that’s a strange way to look at it,” said Kiina as our heroes started walking in some random direction.

“It’s called thinking positively, Kiina,” Berix told her. “I am a positive thinker, so therefore I look for the best in every opportunity. My motto is, ‘If the lion eats you, at least your body is going to use somewhere.’”

“My own motto is, ‘If the lion eats you, then you were probably being stupid in the first place,’” Ackar responded.

-

Our heroes walked for hours in whatever direction seemed most likely to lead to the ninjas’ main fort. Mata Nui was confident they were heading in the right direction. They were so totally not lost. They were heading right on to the ninjas’ fortress and they were going to find it.

In other words, they were totally and helplessly lost, although Mata Nui didn’t want to admit it.

“I have an acute sense of direction,” he said when Kiina asked if they were lost. “I cannot get lost.”

“Which way is our house, then?” asked Kiina.

“Um . . .” Mata Nui looked around for a moment and pointed in a random direction. “That way.”

“How do you know that?” Kiina said.

“How do you know that I am wrong?” Mata Nui shot back. “You don’t know where we are, so it might be in that direction.”

“I thought you said you knew!” said Kiina.

“I, er, um,” said Mata Nui as he struggled to think of a counterargument. “Well, it has to do with the, er-“

“You don’t know where we are, do you?” asked Kiina.

“Okay, I don’t,” said Mata Nui, pouting like a little kid. “I was just making stuff up in order to sound cooler than I am.”

“There’s no way of knowing where we’re supposed to go anyway,” said Ackar, shrugging. “But I think I have an idea.”

“Track down flying squirrels?” said Berix as he excitedly bounced up and down on his steed.

“No, but close,” Ackar responded. “My idea is that we search for any signs of ninjas. If we find any, we can track them down to wherever their main base is.”

“Brilliant,” said Mata Nui. “It’s a good thing I thought of it myself.”

“But I did,” Ackar protested.“I am sure you did, Ackar,” said Mata Nui, patting Ackar on the shoulder like he was an ignorant child. “Now let’s go put my plan into action.”

-

It seemed like years had passed, but eventually our heroes found ninja tracks in the sand, which were shaped like ninja shoes. Our heroes followed them until they found the last thing they expected to find in a land of ninjas: A train station.

It was a large, old-fashioned train station, straight out of the Old West. There did not appear to be any people on the platform, oddly enough, although there was a passenger train belching smoke that looked like it was ready to leave just about any moment now.

“Weird,” said Ackar as they pulled their steeds up to the station. “I didn’t think ninjas needed trains.”

“Hey, maybe this train will take us to their base,” Kiina suggested as they dismounted their sand stalkers. “Let’s go inside and ask around.”

“No,” said Mata Nui, shaking his head. “We will sneak onboard the train, take out the train’s crew, and redirect its route directly to the ninjas’ main base.”

“But we still don’t even know where it is,” Ackar pointed out. “It could be anywhere.”

“Precisely why we’ll ask the crew where it is before we take them out,” Mata Nui said. “Now quickly. I think we can sneak into the luggage car. We’ve got to get in before anyone sees us.”

So without further ado, our heroes leapt off of their sand stalkers and quickly and quietly jumped into the luggage car. There were a lot of suitcases, which they hid behind as well as they could before the door to the car was shut by someone on the outside. Mata Nui thought he heard some kind of growling sound on the train, but he didn’t think much about it, for the next moment the train started chugging along and soon they were on their way to who knows where.

-

After a few minutes, Mata Nui looked around the dark cargo car. He could barely see the others until Ackar lit a flame in his hands, which allowed him to see everyone else sitting around him. Of them all, only Berix appeared to be really excited.

“I’ve only been on a train once before,” Berix said as he bounced up and down. “Don’t you guys remember, from back in the war days?”

“Yeah, I remember that incident quite well,” said Ackar, nodding. “I don’t think we found all of Jimmy, though, after the Michael Bay movie incident.”

“Iba still haveba nightmares abouba that,” said Gresh with a shudder. “Iba did not know thaba yuba could bendba somebody’s spine like thaba.”

“Me neither, Gresh,” said Mata Nui in agreement. “Why, to this day I do not even know what happened to Ronald’s cell phone bomb. That was one crazy day.”

“So, what do we do now?” asked Kiina as the creaking train chugged along.

“Easy,” said Mata Nui as he got up to his feet. “We break into the engine room, interrogate the conductor, and then take this train all the way to the ninja base. And after that, hopefully this terribly written comedy will be done and over with.”

“But how do we get there?” Ackar wondered.

“Climb the top of the train, duh,” said Mata Nui, as though it were obvious. “We run along the top of the train. It’s not that hard, not after the demon piggy incident, you know.”

“All right, then,” said Ackar as he, too, got to his feet. “Lead the way then, Mata Nui.”

-

After shooting the door down, our heroes had climbed to the top of their car and were now attempting to cross the rest of the train. The wind was blowing so fiercely Berix was nearly thrown off a number of times, but Mata Nui led the way regardless of the cost. He was determined to get this train no matter what. Things were going pretty smoothly until they ran into the bear with a robotic arm and a chainsaw shotgun in its hands.

Yes, you read that right. When they were halfway across the train, they suddenly caught sight of the aforementioned bear. How it had gotten there when Mata Nui knew it hadn’t just a few minutes before, none of them knew. All they knew was that it didn’t look friendly as its robotic red eyes focused on them.

“Looks like a threat,” Mata Nui muttered under his breath as he drew his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle and aimed it at the beast. “Let’s kill it.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Ackar, unsheathing his sword.

Just then, three more bears with robotic arms and chainsaw shotguns appeared out of nowhere, followed by half a dozen more. They all aimed their guns at our now-surrounded heroes, ready to literally mow them down if they tried to make a move.

But Mata Nui and Ackar weren’t frightened. Neither were Berix, Gresh, or Kiina. They’d seen worse than bears with robotic arms and chainsaw shotguns before. This would be relatively easy compared to taking on Eldritch Abominations, although that did not mean they were underestimating their foes. It simply meant they were prepared to kick butt and look awesome.

“Let’s kick these guys’ butts and then get out of here,” said Mata Nui to the others. “Now attack!”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 08:58 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Mata Nui blocked the first bear’s with is 40kMGA. The bear’s chainsaw shotgun tried to cut through Mata Nui’s weapon, but it was not strong enough to even make a dent. Mata Nui pushed it back and then shot the bear in the chest. The bear gave a roar of pain and fell off of the train.

Turning around, Mata Nui blocked a devastating attack from yet another bear. Then they got into a kind of weird swordfight, with Mata Nui using his 40kMGA to block or parry the strikes from the bear’s own chainsaw shotgun. He caught the weapon on his own and then flipped up and brought his gun down with enough force to crack the bear’s skull. Shrieking in pain, this bear also fell off of the train.

Mata Nui saw two bears charging at him. So he did the most logical thing he could think of: he bent down and ripped off one of the tiles of the car he was standing on. Then he hurled the tile, which burst into flames, at the bears, which sliced the bears in half as it flew through them.

Then he turned around and saw one bear standing a safe distance from him. The bear input some kind of secret code into its robotic arm and then unleashed a hot, burning laser that literally cut through the air. Mata Nui ducked to avoid it and then shot the bear’s robot arm with his 40kMGA. The bear stumbled back and roared in pain as its arm exploded, sending it falling off of the train onto the tracks below.

Mata Nui pumped his gun and turned around yet again to see a giant bear bearing down on him. There was no way to dodge this one, but he didn’t need to. He slapped it in the face with his gun and then, with an almighty cry of power, punched the bear in the stomach, sending it flying toward Ackar.

Noticing the oncoming bear, Ackar stepped to the side out of its way and then smashed it with his sword, causing it to go to Kiina, who swatted it away with her gun like a baseball.

Berix leapt into the air and caught the flying bear with an unrealistically huge baseball glove. Then he hurled the bear at Gresh, who aimed his twin arm blades and unleashed a powerful blast of wind that sent the bear flying into orbit. The bear exploded – why wouldn’t it? – and rained down candy on them all.

And remember, no bears were harmed in the making of this comedy. In fact, these bears did not actually die. Rather, they used a mixture of stunt doubles, CGI images, and replicas to make it look like they got shot, sliced in half, blown apart, punched in the stomach, smashed with a sword, and their skulls cracked open. Right now the real bears are probably lazing about somewhere in Hollywood, the bums, reaping all of the money they got for doing the easy parts.

Back to the story, our heroes had finished the last of the bears. Now they quickly traversed the rest of the train and reached the engine room, where they surprised the crew of ninjas that had been running the train and quickly subdued them. (The author would show you how they did it, but the author is too lazy to write a whole scene about how characters based on toys from a children’s toyline defeated a train’s ninja crew.)

“How did you get past our bears?” one ninja shrieked as he and his comrades were tied up together. “They were supposed to be unstoppable!”

“Yeah, it took less than half of the chapter to take them all out,” said Mata Nui. “They were easy. Now tell us where this train is headed.”

“It is headed to the High Temple, where our Shogun lives,” the ninja explained as Berix and Ackar examined the controls for the train. “It is our main base.”

“Good,” said Mata Nui, satisfied. “We were planning to head there anyway. Anyway, what’s on this train anyway?”

“Our fellow ninjas,” a second ninja replied, trembling. “We were supposed to deliver them to the High Temple, which is why we were headed there. Could you please make sure they get there safely?”

“Yeah, we’ll make sure they do,” said Mata Nui, already imagining what the train would look like on fire, “after we get there, of course.”

He turned around and said to Berix, “Full steam ahead! We’re heading for the High Temple, where we shall eliminate the Shogun once and for all!”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 09:00 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

The train rumbled forward for hours. To pass the time, our heroes played hot potato with some hot coals they found in the engine. Berix tossed the coal to Gresh, who quickly tossed it to Kiina, who threw it to Ackar, who gave it to Mata Nui, who tossed it back to Berix. It went on like this for a while and the captured ninjas could only watch enviously as our heroes had a lot of fun.

“They’re having so much fun and we aren’t,” one of the ninjas muttered.

“We must find a way to ruin their fun,” another ninja suggested.

“I know!” said a third ninja. “We shall insult their mothers!”

“Genius!” a fourth ninja exclaimed. Then, addressing Mata Nui and co., he said, “Hey, yo mamas so fat that whenever they cluster together people think they’re a solar system!”

Mata Nui looked up slowly and said, “What’d you say about our mamas?”

“We said yo mamas so fat that you could drive a car on them and still not reach their heads!” the ninja said. “Take that!”

Berix absentmindedly caught the hot coal and then threw it at Gresh. Unfortunately, Gresh had been distracted by the ninjas’ trash talk and so was hit in the face by a blisteringly hot coal. He cried out in pain and fell to the ground in agony. He accidentally knocked some more embers onto his face, which caused him to scream even more loudly than before.

Not that anyone was paying any attention to him, however. Trash talking somebody’s mama was far more personal and important than saving your friend from having his face burned off.

“You are insulting our mamas?” said Mata Nui. He was so angry that he punched a hole in the wall just to relieve his rage. “Well, two can play at that game, ninja. Yo mama is so fat that she has her own area code!”

“Ooh!” said Berix to the ninja. “You just got burned, dude!”

“Ninjas cannot be burned!” the ninja declared. “Yo mama so fat she is considered an endangered species!”

“Yo mama so fat she has to eat three hundred tons of meat for breakfast every day just to gain the minimum amount of nutrition she needs!” the ninja replied.

“Yo mama so fat that she was the iceberg that sunk the Titanic!” Mata Nui responded fiercely.

“Yo mama so fat people call her the second biggest mountain in the world,” the ninja said.

“So what’s the biggest mountain?” Mata Nui asked, puzzled.

“Yo mama!” the ninja replied smugly.

His hands balled into fists, Mata Nui growled, “That does it. I didn’t want to make this personal, but yo mama so fat she was a pirate!”

A stunned, dramatic silence filled the room as everyone looked at Mata Nui in shock. The ninja who’d been arguing with Mata Nui appeared absolutely dumbfounded, like he wasn’t sure what to say.

“How . . . dare you call my mama a pirate!” the ninja hissed. “You shouldn’t have made this personal, hero, because now yo mama so fat she was a Mega Bloks figure!”

Another melodramatic silence washed over everyone like the ocean’s waves. Mata Nui was at a loss for words at such an insult. He now knew how that ninja must have felt when he had called that ninja’s mama a pirate, but Mata Nui still wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“Yo mama,” Mata Nui began, his mind coming up with the absolute best ‘yo mama’ joke he could think of, “is so fat that when a space shuttle landed on yo mama, they thought they’d landed on a planet!”

That was more than enough. The ninja struggled to think of a comeback, but the line was so epic that he was literally sent flying backwards out of the train. The ninja was flying so fast that he actually broke through reality and hurtled into the unknown depths of the Void, never to be seen again.

“There,” said Mata Nui, sitting back down and picking up a hot coal. “Who wants to play some more hot potato?”

-

A lone ninja stood at a train platform, occasionally glancing at his wristwatch to check the time. According to his watch, the train should be here in just a few minutes. He was supposed to welcome the new recruits who were supposed to come on the train and then direct them to Fort Ninja, the main headquarters of the ninjas. Then he would see the train off and hopefully get off work in time to watch ‘Throwing Stars,’ a ninja soap opera about movie stars who threw stuff.

Tapping his foot impatiently, he looked down the line and asked aloud, to no one in particular, “What’s taking them so long? I do not even-“

A train whistle blew loudly at that moment, so loudly that he was caught off-guard. Then he noticed a small dot in the distance drawing ever closer, until he could make out of the distinct outline of the train he was supposed to be watching out for.

At least, he thought it was the train, as the train he was expecting wasn’t supposed to be on fire, like the one he saw approaching was. Nor were there supposed to cries of fear mingled with gun shots. He was also pretty sure that five brightly colored beings armed with deadly-looking weapons were not supposed to be standing on the engine, either.

By the time he figured out something was wrong, the train was going too fast. It zipped by him with incredible speed and crashed headlong into the other end of the tracks, instantly blowing up and sending molten debris flying into his face.

But he wasn’t a ninja for nothing. He ducked, jumped, and dodged in whatever way he could to avoid being hit by the flaming debris, while also running to not get burned by the flames. He had no idea why the train had crashed until he looked up and saw those same five brightly colored beings standing above him on the station’s roof.

“Who are you?” the ninja demanded. “Did you cause this explosion?”

“We might have,” said the yellow figure vaguely.

“Yeah, we did,” said the small blue figure, who was twirling double barrel guns in his hands. “We crashed it and then jumped off all slow-motion awesome-y and-“

“You shall pay for this!” the ninja yelled as he drew nun-chucks and began spinning them in his hands. “My brothers, attack!”

From the wreckage of the train arose hundreds of flaming figures – the ninjas that were supposed to be dead. They were all on fire (which is kind of what ‘flaming’ means, but whatever), but looked just fine as they drew an array of weapons that ranged from throwing stars to bazookas all the way to banana peels (the guy with the banana peels, it should be noted, was considered nerdy by the others and never got any dates in high school due to his lack of social abilities).

“You don’t need to announce that to the whole world!” Max the nerd ninja grumbled.

Now Mata Nui and the others were facing an army of flaming ninjas. It was an impressive sight, watching the ninjas as they pulled off cool moves with their weapons and acted like they were too cool for school.

“Yeah,” said Ackar, smiling. “But since we aren’t merciful, let’s make sure they only wished they were crippled.”

“Or make them crippled they were wished!” Berix added.

“Uh, Berix, that makes no sense,” said Ackar, ducking to avoid a flaming arrow shot by one of the ninjas. “You have your verbs reversed.”

“No, it makes sense if you don’t think about it like me,” said Berix, shaking his head.

“Right,” said Ackar, unimpressed. “Well, there’s no reason to argue about this. Let’s just get this fight over with already and then go home. I need my prunes.”

“Ha, ha, old guy joke,” Berix giggled as they all jumped into the army of ninjas with such speed and agility that they looked like blurs. “Old guy jokes are funny.”

-

Mata Nui lifted two ninjas above him and then slammed them together so hard they transformed into an energy arrow of pure flames. Then he hurled it at a group of ninjas, which collided and blew that lot into kingdom come.

“[Bleep] on that!” Mata Nui said as he casually shot another ninja in the face with his gun without even looking. “And [bleep] on that, too!”

Meanwhile, Ackar was sword fighting six dozen ninjas at once. He blocked, parried, deflected, stabbed, sliced, slashed, and did whatever else he could to protect himself from the ninjas. He blocked all 72 swords at once with his single blade and – with just the right amount of pressure – snapped all 72 blades at the exact same time, causing the ninjas to gasp in horror as their weapons broke.

“[Bleep] this!” Ackar roared as he spun around with his sword, felling at least five ninjas for each one he killed. “[Bleep] yeah!”

Near the station entrance, Kiina was furiously spinning her gun so fast that it unleashed a cyclone that threw hundreds of ninjas in the air. Then she literally jumped off of the cyclone and – with a thousand shots – completely killed all of the ninjas. She performed an infinite amount of summersaults before landing on the ground, breathing hard.

“[Bleep]! That was hot!” Kiina said, pumping her fist.

Meanwhile, Gresh and Berix were fighting back to back. A horde of ninjas had surrounded them both and was attempting to kill them, but Gresh and Berix were just too awesome to get killed. They swung their blades, shot guns, and in general were being pretty awesome.

“Ninjas atba twelve o’ clockba!” Gresh yelled as he sent a dozen ninjas sprawling into oblivion. “[Bleepba] thaba was close!”

“[Pleeb] yeah!” Berix shouted as he mowed down a thousand flaming ninjas that tried to attack him. “[Pleeb] that!”

“Uhba, Berix?” said Gresh as he countered a ninja’s dagger. “Isn’t it supposed toba beba ‘bleep’ba? What does ‘pleeb’ba meanba?”

“You mean it’s not pleeb?” Berix asked in surprise. “Holy [pleeb]! What have I been saying all of this time?”

Several hours later, the last of the flaming ninjas defeated, our heroes regrouped at the gate. Mata Nui had interrogated a ninja about the exact location of Fort Ninja and according to that unfortunate being the fortress was located only a few miles from their current location. After that Mata Nui disposed of the ninja and informed his friends of what he learned.

“Lazy good-for-nothing,” Ackar said, shaking his head. “Back in my day, we had to walk three miles through snow to get to school. And we liked it, too!” (Author’s note: Ackar is lying and has never been to school.)

Mata Nui pondered the dilemma and then looked at the burnt wreckage of the train. It looked totally unsalvageable, yet an idea was hatching in his mind even now as he examined the remains.

“Let’s just say I have a totally crazy idea that just might work,” said Mata Nui as he took the screw driver and chainsaw. “Let’s get down to work.”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 09:05 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Normally, watching a train dashing across the desert sands of Bara Magna was not an odd sight. The only difference between this train and the others was that it looked like it had been patched together rather hastily. That and the fact that it was moving freely of the railways was a bit odd, but its patched together look was worth commenting on more in my opinion.

“See?” Mata Nui said to Ackar as their train chugged along loudly. “Screw drivers and chainsaws can always fix anything!”

“I never doubted it,” Ackar replied with a smile. “Although I remember that one time you tried to fix my car with your screw driver and chainsaw. I still don’t know what happened to the carburetor.”

“Oh, that’s, er, a long and complicated story involving flying purple dinosaurs, the ghost of Elvis Presley, and the power of rock,” Mata Nui said hastily, turning away from Ackar to avoid having to make eye contact with his mentor. “Anyway, we shouldn’t be worrying about missing carburetors. What we should be thinking of is Fort Ninja. We should see it any minute now.”

They rode on in silence for several more minutes, before Kiina hesitantly said, “Er, Mata Nui?”

“Yeah?” said Mata Nui, looking up at her. “What’s the problem, Kiina?”

“Well, ninjas are known for their stealth,” Kiina continued as she looked out the train. “So doesn’t it make some sense that maybe the ninjas concealed their fortress? What if we can’t find it because we can’t see it? We might have already passed it if I’m right.”

“Yeah, Kiina, that’s if you’re right,” said Ackar sharply. “Besides, how could you possibly conceal an entire fortress? It just doesn’t make any sense, Kiina. It’s like blowing up an explosion. It just doesn’t- wait, bad example. Well, it’s like a flying kitchen. You just don’t see flying kitchens in real life.”

“Uh, no it didn’t,” Kiina pointed out. “We’ve seen far weirder things during our journey than invisible fortresses. It’s not that weird once you think about it.”

“Well, I say-“ said Ackar, before their train crashed through reality.

Or at least, that’s what it seemed like. They had actually crashed through a thick stone wall and were chugging through what looked like a gigantic factory. As their train raced through the factory-like place, ninjas working at conveyor belts looked up in surprise. There appeared to be hundreds of ninjas all over the place, but the train was going so fast that the ninjas couldn’t stop it.

A large sign that read ‘HIGH TEMPLE FORT NINJA’ passed by overhead, which caused Kiina to smirk and say to Ackar, “See, Ackar? I was right. The ninjas really did conceal their fortress and we somehow managed to find it. So there.”

The others looked in the direction he indicated and saw that they were rapidly approaching a gigantic furnace bigger than anything they’d ever seen before. Mata Nui doubted any of them would survive if their train crashed into it, so he shouted, “Everyone! Leap to safety or else we’ll all die in a fiery explosion of doom!”

They didn’t need to be told twice. Mata Nui, Kiina, and Gresh leapt out of the right side, while Ackar and Berix made for the left. Everyone made it to safety and their old train – which Berix had earlier christened ‘Thomas’ – crashed headfirst into the huge furnace.

As soon as the train collided with the furnace, a huge explosion erupted from the collision. Fiery debris went flying through the air, striking the walls, ceiling, floor, and even some of the ninjas who were not fast enough to dodge. Mata Nui and Ackar created a shield of energy to protect their friends from the explosion, however, so they were okay.

Once the explosion had passed, they let the shield down and examined their surroundings. Everywhere they looked there was destruction. Ninjas lay wounded or dead; dozens of conveyor belts were ripped to shreds or on fire; most of the things the ninjas had been working on where utterly destroyed; and there was a huge hole in the wall where the furnace had once stood. In general, the place looked pretty destroyed.

“It looks like that explosion did most of the work for us,” Ackar observed.

“Yeah, but we still have to rescue Raanu,” said Mata Nui. He then looked at the screen and said to the readers, “Bet you forgot about that didn’t you?”

“Mata Nui, who are you talking to?” asked Kiina, puzzled.

“The people reading this comedy at this very moment,” said Mata Nui, pointing at the screen. “Can’t you see them?”

Everyone turned as one and looked at the screen. For a moment, there was an awkward silence as our heroes looked at the readers.

Then Ackar turned away and said, “Well, anyway, let’s go find-“

Without warning, a billion ninjas burst from the shadows. They did not attack, but merely surrounded our heroes until there was literally nowhere for Mata Nui and the crew to run. Every conceivable exit – including the mouse holes – was blocked off in some way, shape, or form. Not that our heroes would ever think of running, but that option was pretty much closed off to them now.

“Ninjas,” said Mata Nui, stating the obvious.Then they heard a deep, great laugh that drew their attention to the ceiling. Hanging from a very thin though sturdy rope was a large, old man in classical Japanese samurai armor (even though he was a ninja). He was sitting cross-legged in midair and stared at them in amusement with dark eyes that reflected the evils of his soul or some crud like that. I’m just trying to sound poetic here, okay?

“I see you have finally made your way here,” said the old man, stroking his long, silvery beard. “My ninjas have been keeping track of your progress. I must say I am impressed that you made it here in one piece. I had thought you would have died at some point.”

“My name?” said the old man, chuckling. “I have no proper name, young one. But I will tell you my title. I am the Grand Di-Shogun of this land, the leader of ninjas all over the world, although you may call me Shogun for short if you wish.”

“All I wish for is that you give us Old Man Raanu or we’ll kick your butt into outer space,” said Mata Nui.

“And don’t tempt us,” Ackar added, “we’ve kicked people into space before, so we know what we’re talking about here.”

The Shogun laughed. “Kick me into space? You must be delusional. My power and skill is insurmountable. Why, if I wanted, I could kill all five of you right now.”

“Really?” said Mata Nui in surprise. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because I don’t feel like it,” said the Shogun, crossing his arms. “Besides, your weak mind cannot even begin to understand the complex and contradictory thoughts of my supreme ninja mind. It is time to kill you, unless you wish to leave this place.”

Mata Nui shot a nearby ninja and snapped, “Never. We’re not leaving until we get what we came for. Got it?”

“But I will never relinquish Old Man Raanu to you,” said the Shogun as he drew a long sword. “If I did, I would have to kill myself right now and make my nephew Billy the new Grand Di-Shogun.”

He pointed at a kid hanging from the ceiling next to him, a young teenager with brown hair and a t-shirt that read, ‘My uncle’s a Shogun!’

“I’m a ninja!” Billy said brightly.

“Does he look anything like a proper Shogun to you?” said the Shogun. “Of course he doesn’t. Thus, I will eliminate you if you will not leave here.”

The Shogun gestured to his ninjas and yelled, “Ninjas, attack these intruders! Let them feel the wrath of the ninja so they may be a testament to those foolish enough to stand in our way!”

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 09:09 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Over a billion ninjas descended on our heroes at once. Any mortal being would have died with fear at the sight of so many killer assassins descending upon them. It would have been too much for a normal person’s mind to handle. Indeed, a normal person would probably have died of a heart attack due to sheer fright.

With amazing speed and agility, our friends quickly formed an octagon around the billion ninjas. Exactly how they accomplished that is uncertain considering how crowded the room was. Still, they managed to form an octagon anyway and then aimed their weapons directly at the middle of the factory fortress, where through some reality warping all one billion ninjas happened to be gathered.

“For unity!” Mata Nui roared.

“For unity!” the others chanted in unison.

Beams of color-coded energy erupted from their weapons at the exact same time. The energy beams collided in the exact center of the factory and actually absorbed into a lone ninja who happened to be in their way. The ninja could not take such powerful power, however, and imploded and exploded and imploded and exploded again with such force that he created an explosion that would have definitely left a mark on the galaxy’s surface had Mata Nui not grabbed it and threw it into the sky. The explosion blew up in the sky, safely harming nothing.

So what did that accomplish? Well, there were no longer any ninjas left except for the Shogun and his nephew, Billy, for one. It also allowed them to be awesome, but since that is an established fact there’s no reason to harp on about it.

“So you have destroyed my army of a billion ninjas,” the Shogun observed. “I did not think it was possible, but I suppose even I can be mistaken at times.”

“Darn right you are,” said Mata Nui. “Anyway, we’ll spare you if you will only give us Raanu.”

“Never!” the Shogun shouted. “Die!”

With incredible speed such as never before seen, the Shogun erupted into a blur of motion. He was moving so fast that even Mata Nui had a hard time seeing him. Our heroes also couldn’t hear him, for he was moving so fast that his sound was not able to catch up with his movements.

It is difficult to describe exactly how things look when one is moving at super speed. The best way we can describe it is that everything appears to be moving super, super slow, to the point where already slow people appear to not be moving at all.

It was in this condition that Gresh found himself. His orange eyes scanned the area for the Shogun, but he could not spot the ninja leader anywhere.

Could heba really beba moving thaba fast? Gresh thought in horror. Is heba moving so fast thab heba is impossible to seeba even whenba yuba are moving atba his speedba?

Translation: Is he really moving so fast that he is impossible to see even when you are moving as fast as him?

Gresh thought he heard something behind him and, turning around, saw the Shogun in the air, his sword raised.

“Eat Ramen noodles, insolent fool!” the Shogun roared as he brought his blade down on Gresh’s head.

Gresh raised his shield just in time and blocked the Shogun’s sword. He then seized the Shogun’s arm and shouted, “Speed downba!”

The world appeared to shake and immediately everything went back to normal. The others gasped at what they saw, but Mata Nui knew exactly what to do.

“No!” the Shogun snarled as he tried to break free of Gresh’s iron grip. “You can’t do this! Do you know who I am?”

“Yuba definitely noba theba Juggernaut,” Gresh said.

With that, Mata Nui pulled the trigger and unleashed a bullet that drew energy from the environment as it flew through the air. Gresh knew he would have to let go of the Shogun soon, but not just yet, for he if did now the Shogun would simply teleport away and they would not be able to defeat him.

The bullet was merely a split second from colliding with the Shogun. Moving so fast that he almost broke reality, Gresh activated his awesomeness speed and disappeared to safety.

The Grand Di-Shogun was not so lucky.

The bullet hit the Shogun straight in the chest and once it had entered his heart, exploded. The resulting explosion was so huge that it would have literally torn the universe in half had Mata Nui not kicked it back with such force that he created a barrier it around it somehow, containing the explosion in one small area until it finally dissipated on its own.

And the Shogun – the grand leader of the ninjas, the most powerful and dangerous of them all - was no more.

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 09:12 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

“Uh, I was asking you if you thought the comedy was a big disappointment,” Ackar said, exasperated. “Not if you thought the battle was cool.”

“Aw, no, man,” said Berix, carelessly waving him off. “Your expectations were too high. It’s not a bad comedy; it’s a good comedy that is far above things like character development and plot coherency. That stuff is archaic, man.”

Ackar turned from the two and watched Mata Nui and Gresh approach that Billy kid, the nephew of the Grand Di-Shogun. He wondered what they were going to do to the kid. Kill him? Nah, Billy hadn’t attacked them nor did anything else other than say “I’m a ninja!”

Perhaps they’ll rough him up a bit so him and his family will know not to come after us, Ackar thought. Then the author can write a bad sequel where Billy tries to avenge his uncle’s death or some crud like that. I know that’s what he’s planning.

To Ackar’s surprise, however, Mata Nui helped Billy to his feet and said to the young ninja, “Billy, I am certain you can see the problems your father caused here.”

Billy nodded, although based on the expression in his face it was clear he wasn’t taking in anything Mata Nui was saying.

“He caused death and chaos and carnage and was probably planning to take over the world and replace our government with a New Ninja World Order,” Mata Nui said. “Because of this, he sacrificed the lives of many innocent ninjas in his quest to kill us. It was clear he was a foolish leader and probably would have lead you all into destruction had we not stopped him before he got far.”

“Yeah,” said Billy.

“However, I think we can set aside our differences and work together,” said Mata Nui as he put one hand on Billy’s shoulder. “As your mother said, you are in line to become the next Grand Di-Shogun. Thus, if you will take the mantle of Grand Di-Shogun, you might be able to lead your people to a more peaceful future.”

“I mean, I do not want to be the next Grand Di-Shogun,” said Billy, crossing his arms. “Allow me to explain. You see, I have known since I was a baby what my destiny was. My destiny is far grander than leading the ninjas. It is of cosmic importance, in fact.”

Before Billy could respond, the ceiling evaporated above them without warning. Mata Nui and the others looked up in time to see a familiar giant face that they had not thought they would ever see again.

“Super Planet!” Mata Nui gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“I have come to take Billy away,” Super Planet’s voice echoed, causing a nearby mountain to shatter into a million pieces. “It is his destiny to work as my apprentice, so that when I pass away he shall take my place as the Super Planet of the universe.”

“And eventually I shall succeed him, yes,” said Billy, nodding. “Now good bye, my friends. I shall ascend to a higher plane of existence now. Perhaps we will see each other again in the future.”

“But wait, Billy, before you go, I need to ask you a question,” said Mata Nui.

“What is your question?”

“Where’s Old Man Raanu?” said Mata Nui, looking around the place. “Since, you know, that is kind of the whole reason we went on this adventure in the first place.”

“Oh, my late uncle stuffed him in the broom closet over there,” said Billy, carelessly gesturing over his shoulder at a normal, unimpressive-looking door. “He’s probably okay.“Now good bye, my friends. Super Planet and I shall leave this world, but perhaps someday we will return. When we next see each other, however, I am sure I will be better than you all. Good bye.”

With that, Billy quickly ascended into the heavens until he disappeared in the clouds. Then Super Planet waved good bye at them and flew away to go battle unknown evils in the farthest reaches of the universe.

Mata Nui, completely ignoring what had just happened, walked over to the closet door and opened it. Inside was a small, red-armored Agori tied to a stool with a sock in his mouth. Mata Nui ripped the sock from the Agori’s mouth, allowing the prisoner to breathe freely once again.

“You are Raanu, correct?” asked Mata Nui as he shot the ropes off of Raanu’s body.

“Indeed I am, my young chap,” said Raanu as he rubbed his wrists. “And who might you be, my friend?”

Mata Nui reached out with a hand and said, “I’m your savior.”

-

The trip back to Vulcanus was generally uneventful. Old Man Raanu kept rattling on about how the ninjas mistreated him and how badly written this comedy, but everyone stopped paying attention to him when he started complaining about his lack of prunes.

Once they reached the fire village, Raanu was reunited with his son Tarix. Tarix thanked them and rewarded them with over 80 trillion dollars (Raanu, as it turned out, was the richest Agori in the whole universe and thus could spare to give them a few trillion dollars for all of the trouble they went through).

So, now 80 trillion dollars richer, our heroes turned their journey homeward. Along the way, they split up. Ackar was the first to go, heading directly for his house once it was within sight. Berix went next, although since they did not see a house anywhere they did not know where he was going. And finally Gresh returned to his home, a humble little hut painted neon green and pink for some reason.

Eventually, Mata Nui and Kiina finally reached their own house. When they entered the place they discovered that it was in the same shape as it had been when Mata Nui had left it, except for one tiny detail that lay across the table:

“Oh, Mata Nui!” Kiina gasped, standing in the doorway and staring at the table. “Is that a . . . cybernetic demon wolf?”

“Indeed it is, Kiina,” said Mata Nui as he put an arm around her shoulders. “I killed it myself before I figured out you were kidnapped. I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh, I love it!” Kiina said as she walked over and examined the wolf’s corpse. “I could do all kinds of things with this.” She looked up at Mata Nui with tearful eyes and said, “You are the sweetest action hero I ever knew.”

“Aw, I already knew that,” said Mata Nui, blushing, before Kiina hit him on the head. “Ow! What was that for?”

“But apparently not the humblest,” Kiina sighed, exasperated.

-

That night, after dinner, Mata Nui sat outside on the porch, polishing his 40k Mighty Grandma Assault rifle. He was just minding his own business when a paper airplane flew into his eye.

“Ow!” Mata Nui cried as he put one hand on his injured eye. “Who was the moron that threw that piece of-?”

He looked down and saw that there were words written on the airplane. Unfolding it, he read the note:

Mata Nui,

We, Dah Element Lords, have kidnapped your two friends, Double Barrel Berix and Gresh. They have unfinished business with us that has caused us to have to take matters into our own hands. If you wish to see them alive again, please deliver 80 trillion dollars to us by the end of the week.

Mata Nui turned to her and said dramatically, “Gresh and Berix have been kidnapped by Dah Element Lords. They want 80 trillion dollars by the end of the week or else we won’t see them alive ever again.”

Then check out My Little BIONICLE: Friendship is Explosive, a crossover between the Legend Trilogy and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic taking place shortly after the end of the Legend Trilogy. Rest assured that it has all the same awesome action sequences and wacky humor that the Legend Trilogy does, plus ponies! What's not to like about that?

-TNTOS-

Edited by TNTOS, Dec 08 2013 - 09:18 PM.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt